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Can Launchpad karma run over Sourceforge dogma?

As more-and-more open source projects become financially viable, the development and identification of talent becomes ever-more crucial. Launchpad hopes its Karma Calculation provides this valuable service, smoothing the way for students and amateurs into the professional ranks.
Written by Dana Blankenhorn, Inactive

Canonical, which previously gave us Ubuntu and Mark Shuttlesworth in space, has launched a Sourceforge competitor called Launchpad.

While the features for projects are not yet up to what Sourceforge offers, they do have a feature which brings into sharp relief what this battle is really all about.

It's called the Karma Calculation. You register with Launchpad and it counts all the work you do registering bugs, translating strings and answering support requests.

The idea, in a business sense, is to give community members, and potential employers, a full accounting of a user's contributions. It gives Launchpad a people-centric rather than a project-centric orientation. It's a differentiator.

This follows the efforts of many companies to take their own community efforts in-house through the creation of what might be called "forge" sites, such as Sugarforge. The idea is partly to let the project leader give back, but also to give the project leader some control over its community. And to identify community leaders.

As more-and-more open source projects become financially viable, the development and identification of talent becomes ever-more crucial. Launchpad hopes its Karma Calculation provides this valuable service, smoothing the way for students and amateurs into the professional ranks.  

Which should be good for everyone, even Sourceforge. They say they're looking for some good hires right now.  

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