The Canonical-backed Ubuntu Linux project has released its single sign-on authentication software as an open source project.
Ubuntu uses the Launchpad project management application to manage its software releases, which was itself released as open source in mid-2009, but the authentication application, Canonical Identity Provider, remained proprietary.
The release comes a week before Ubuntu’s next major version, 10.04 “Lucid Lynx”.
Canonical Identity Provider is used by both the Launchpad and Ubuntu single sign-on services.
In announcing the release, Ubuntu community manager, Jono Bacon, said since Launchpad went open source it has seen a “wonderful and thriving Launchpad development community flourish”.
“I am pleased to announce that we are now able to provide this code under an AGPL3 license,” Bacon wrote on his blog.
“Thanks to Stuart Metcalfe who has been coordinating the technical and licensing work to be able to contribute this change.”
The Canonical SSO provider project is part of Canonical Identity Systems, which is a series of projects to support Canonical's OpenID-based SSO platform.
It includes a number of add-on modules to integrate with OpenID that are released under an open source license.
The Canonical Identity Systems project is online at: https://launchpad.net/canonical-identity.
Earlier this month Canonical announced it would switch Ubuntu’s default Internet search back to Google after a brief testing period with Yahoo!