Make clear that Launchpad is not just for free software

[Matthew East]

I discovered today that Launchpad isn't only for free software projects, and that non-free / commercial software projects can use Launchpad on a commercial basis. I think this is an important feature of Launchpad that not many users are aware of, and in fairness to them it should be made clearer in the interface and documentation in the interest of transparency.

Places where the issue appears are:

 * <https://help.launchpad.net/>
 * <https://launchpad.net/+tour/index>, in the main banner and body text

See also bug 252995.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

Any triaging for this?

[Joey Stanford (joey)]

Elliot, since this a simple wording change and you have a lot of items on your plate, if you want to pass me some updated wording, I'll fix and commit on the front page, the help wiki, and +about.

[Elliot Murphy (statik)]

Perhaps I'm just being dense, but this text doesn't seem misleading to me and I don't see any benefit to changing it.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

The front page currently says: "Launchpad is a free software hosting and development website".If Launchpad isn't just for free software, and other software projects can use it, I think that should be made clear, both because such projects might want to use Launchpad, and because Launchpad's existing users should have a proper description of its scope.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

The new front page of Launchpad now says: "Launchpad is hosting service for open source projects that's big on collaboration". I think the bug is still valid: if Launchpad is available to projects which are not open source, then it should read "Launchpad is hosting service for software projects that's big on collaboration".

(The grammar of the new phrase is a little awkward, but I guess that is a different bug!)

[Matthew Revell (matthew.revell)]

Launchpad remains primarily a service for free software/open source projects. I think we should keep that emphasis in most of our communication but that we should also look at how best to communicate with people who want to use our services for non-free projects.

Brad: would you have some time to talk with me about that?

[shawnlandden (shawnlandden)]

Saying that Launchpad is for free software/open source projects without pointing out that it is not itsself free software is highly misleading. It either needs to make clear that it is NOT free software or remove the reference to free software (as differentiated from any software).

[Joey Stanford (joey)]

I think will be a mostly moot point. There will be an open sourcing of LP event in July.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

This bug is now fixed on the Launchpad front page and the Tour. It remains on help.launchpad.net.

[Matthew Revell (matthew.revell)]

We need to add a permanent link on the home page, rather than a new item, add more detail to the tour, add a link from the project sign-up and also add detail to help.launchpad.net.

[Matthew Revell (matthew.revell)]

I'll add a page about commercial subscriptions to the tour.

[Matthew Revell (matthew.revell)]

Martin A has provided a new headline graphic for this page. SomeHands prep and AllHands (Canonical company events) meant that this got pushed back to 2.2.6, though.

[Diogo Matsubara (matsubara)]

Fixed in devel r8607.

[Matthew Revell (matthew.revell)]

Setting this to "Triaged" for Launchpad Foundations as I don't believe we have a branch yet to add a permanent mention to the home page.

[Matthew Revell (matthew.revell)]

The final section of this, as far as Launchpad docs is concerned, is adding useful info about commercial subscriptions to the LP tour. And here it is:

https://launchpad.net/+tour/join-launchpad

[Martin Albisetti (beuno)]

Not in our focus.