Launchpad is a web application and website that allows users to develop and maintain software, particularly open-source software. It is developed and maintained by Canonical Ltd.

On 21 July 2009, the source code was released publicly under the GNU Affero General Public License. As of June 2018^[update], the Launchpad repository hosts more than 40,000 projects. The domain launchpad.net attracted 1 million visitors by August 2009 according to a Compete.com survey.

It has several parts:

A significant but less visible component is Soyuz, "the distribution management portion of Launchpad." Launchpad is currently primarily used in the development of Ubuntu, an operating system. Launchpad uses the FOSS (free/open source) Zope 3 application server.

Several of Canonical Ltd.'s own projects use Launchpad for development including Ubuntu and Bazaar. Development of Launchpad is itself managed in Launchpad.

Other prominent projects using Launchpad for various aspects of managing their development include:

Launchpad was initially criticized by the Jem Report and other members of the free software community for not being available under a free license, such as the GNU GPL, despite its aims. In response, the developers stated that they aimed to eventually release it under a free software license, but that it could potentially take years. On 9 July 2007, Canonical Ltd. released Storm, the first Launchpad component made available under a free software license.

Founder Mark Shuttleworth's responded to this criticism saying "we are all actively working on making Launchpad open source" adding that the funding the salaries of Launchpad's developers to be higher priority, and claiming immediate release would result multiple unfederated instances of Launchpad. However, this still left some members of the open-source movement dissatisfied. On 22 July 2008, Mark Shuttleworth announced at OSCON that the complete source code would be released within the next twelve months.