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The great range of apps that we see hosted in Launchpad never ceases to amaze me. Take Bauble for example:

Bauble is a biodiversity collection manager. It is intended to be used by botanic gardens, herbaria, arboreta, etc. to manage their collection information. It is a open, free, cross-platform alternative to BG-Base and similiar software. It uses Python, GTK+ and SQLAlchemy.

Am I alone in finding that really, really cool?

Mark Shuttleworth, spaceman, ideas man, Ubuntu founder and fearless leader at Canonical Towers announced yesterday that Launchpad will be open sourced within the next 12 months.

This is pretty cool news. With Launchpad, we make a big deal of supporting free and open-source software. Our aim is to provide a central platform through which people and projects can collaborate to produce the best possible products. We're working hard on creating easy-to-use APIs so that people can do everything they can in the Launchpad web interface programmatically, and we're doing a lot of work with upstream bugtrackers to allow us to sync bugs, statuses and comments with them as efficiently as possible.

But the one thing that we hear more often than anything else (except, perhaps, "git is better than bzr," which I'll leave for another day) is "I won't use Launchpad because it's not Open Source." There's a lot of accusations of hypocrisy towards Launchpad: if it's not Open Source how can it, without being deeply hypocritical, aim to become a central point for the development of Open Source software?

I can see people's argument there, though I disagree with them that not having an Open Source platform fundamentally prevents you from supporting open source development because, well, we're doing it anyway. Hopefully this will go some way towards convincing them that we really do mean what we say about being a major part of the Open Source community.

And I confess there's a measure of personal satisfaction in this. No longer (or at least after we've actually made the Open Source release) will I be treated like some sort of mildly infectious Typhoid Mary by otherwise perfectly pleasant people (usually from the FSF, I find) because I develop closed-source software (this happened a few times at UDS in Prague and really started to grate on me).

I confess, though, that when I read the news I did think "so, will I be out of a job in eighteen months time?" I'm sure Mark wouldn't do that, though... Right?

If you're one of the people that's here for the technical guff rather than the writing or photography guff, you'll be interested (you will be interested) to note that registration for Ubuntu Live 2008 is now open.

From t'website:

Ubuntu Live is a vibrant and important gathering of IT professionals, government and business leaders, educators, community leaders, enterprise and business users. The conference brings together the people who deploy and manage Ubuntu in organizations, companies offering services and solutions based on Ubuntu, customers of those services, users of Ubuntu, and the folks who build Ubuntu and other key open source software.

So there you go. I have no idea whether I'll be attending yet. There will be some talking about Launchpad as far as I can tell but whether that'll need me to be there I don't know (it's the company's decision at the end of the day). Still, last year's event was apparently tremendous fun, so if you've got the means and the desire, get yourself registered.

I'm waiting for Ubuntu JeOS (pronounced Juice, by the way) to download at the moment so that I can do some virtualised stuff. Well, more accurately, so that I can do some virtualised stuff without having to wait for ever and ever and ever for X to start when I don't need it. Since JeOS is only 151MB of ISO as opposed to the server install's 600-odd MB, I figured that it might make things slightly quicker all round to just download the new, no-bells-or-whistles flavour of Ubuntu. I'll let you know how it goes.

It's not just the unwieldy nature of, say, the Gnome desktop when running under VirtualBox that concerns me. Just half an hour ago I had to power down my machine and do some fairly hefty maintenance with a can of compressed air and some thermal transfer paste to ensure that my backup script, which runs once every six hours, didn't make my CPU overheat. Something tells me that it's getting close to the time when I'm going to want to build myself a new PC. Maybe I'll see if I can get this one to last 'til April and then stick Hardy on the new one as a fresh install. Yes, that sounds like a good idea. (And also, by having just written that, I've talked myself out of spending the money that I was thinking of spending on a new bass on PC bits; it's always nice to be able to talk myself out of things I don't really want to do).

Right. The JeOS install is running in a new VirtualBox instance. The CPU is currently running at 61° C; let's see how it does (it got to 70° last time around).

"So what news from the wilds of Lancaster?" I hear you ask. Well, dear reader, once again I have been consumed by work, work and a bit more work. It seems like I haven't done much besides hack on Launchpad since I returned from Massachusetts last month. Not that I'm complaining about that - after all, hacking on Launchpad is what keeps me in new bass money - but it's been nice this weekend to not think about it, at least for a while. Launchpad version 1.1.12 will hopefully be rolled out this week. After that we as a development team will be taking time off for Christmas, ready to start on the next development cycle in January. I think that in terms of improvements Launchpad 1.1.12 is going to be a pretty good release. I've managed to get quite a few bugs fixed and new (and in demand, I might add) features added this cycle, and I'm absolutely certain that other members of the team will have done that and more besides.

All of which means that, once again, I haven't had much time to write. Normally, not having written anything would have seriously pissed me off by now, but I've been enjoying my work so much (apart from the bits where I find myself still hacking at 11 o'clock at night and unable to make sense out of what turns out in the morning to be the simplest of problems) that I haven't really had time to get annoyed at myself. I plan to do some scribbling over Christmas (I did have an idea for a Christmas story which I might try and jot down this week if I have the time).

Other than that, life continues pretty much as normal chez Binns. Tomorrow night I'm going to be at a wedding party, which means that for the first time since I joined Canonical I'm going to have to get my hair cut. Whether I get it cut short or just shorter I've yet to decide. Part of me wonders what I look like under this great shaggy mass; another part is glad to have a warm covering in the winter months.

And finally, dear reader, the JeOS install is more-or-less complete. Bon. And the CPU temp never went above 61°. Très bon.

I'm writing this from the concourse at London Euston, where I'm perched atop my luggage waiting for my train home to Lancaster. I wouldn't have been perched atop what is, let me tell you, a damn uncomfortable bag were it not for the fact that I rather over-prepared for the lack of a Victoria Line service this morning and in so doing managed to arrive an hour and a half before my train left. Still, at least I'm not going to be dashing around at the last minute, which is a bonus.

This week, I have mostly been sprinting on Launchpad things with part of the team here in London. This is the view we have from the office (did I mention that I love my job?). One of the great things about working where I do when I'm in London, for there are several, is that you get to see the weather coming from miles away. On Tuesday we got to watch a rainstorm sweeping its way from North to South across London. When I've fixed up the pictures and removed the reflections of strip lights from them (because there's not much call on the 27th floor for the windows to open) I'll post them up to Flickr for your enjoyment and edification.

The train back's going to take at least five hours to get to Lancaster (coming down took nearly eight hours due to a broken down train at Preston, so I'm not holding out too much hope), so I'm left wondering what to do with myself on the journey. On the way down I read Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein, which is hilarious but which you wouldn't lend to your mother, and now I'm reading Spook Country by William Gibson. I've also got the latest LUGRadio episode on my Zen, so the more I think about it, the more I think I'll manage. I might even get some hacking done if the fancy takes me.