Open Source to the Moon
Google is currently sponsoring a competition called Google Lunar X PRIZE, a race to the moon. Google will award $30 million the first team to safely land a remote-controlled robot, that can send images and data back to Earth, on the moon. Among the many competitors, Team FREDNET is unique: it is the only 100% open source competitor. What that means is that essentially anybody can join and/or contribute to the project. In an interview on NPR, Fred Bourgeois, one of the primary leaders, said that they have contributors from a dozen countries and of all ages, including a middle-schooler. This is an amazing achievement in global collaboration, and is strong evidence of how flat our world has become. 10 years ago, this team effort would have been impossible. Now it is impressive only because of its goal. The open source community has long since expanded to include the whole world. Developers from Asia to Africa contribute regularly to project such as GNU and Apache. But an open source approach to an international competition is a new idea. It’s a great step forward for globalization and will hopefully lead to increased international collaboration on other important projects.