ShipOS is an edge computing platform for ships. It enables a simple global development and deployment infrastructure.
The ShipOS Foundation is the membership organization that develops the Open Source ShipOS.
The Foundation is in its infancy and seeks both members and developers for greater traction.
ShipOS is already a functional, feature-rich solution. It empowers anyone to develop and deploy apps for ships.
The vision is a democratic, crowd-sourced continuous improvement and innovation for the shipping industry.
View the site.
An Open Source project usually starts out with a simple itch. Someone has an issue they need to solve. They attack it with some code and invite other like-minded programmers to join in the effort. The structure is usually remarkably simple. The one that contributes the most ends up with the most influence.
As the solution develops into a solid product, sometimes it gets attention from business. Investors, venture capitalists, corporations large and small. Someone out there may see a business opportunity or a business itch that needs some scratching. And away we go.
The simple get-it-done-approach meets business complexity. More often than not the addition of capital to an Open Source project drastically increases complexity. You get boards, committees, long charters and bureaucracy. Development may suffer. Witness OpenOffice, Ximian, Suse.
Can the fusion of business and Open Source be done simpler?
How about discarding the organizational structure along with all committees, councils and boards? How about replacing it with a simple voting system that is directly connected with what actually gets developed?
The ShipOS Foundation started out with needs for digitalization in the maritime industry. There has been plenty of initiatives to bring digitalization to shipping. But they all met a wall of troubles - from lack of connectivity, lousy bandwidth and a conservative mindset. Solutions ending up on vessels ususally served a single purpose, often made for the dry land, failing on the oceans.
The Norwegian ship owner Wilhelmsen Group needed a simpler way to develop, deploy and manage applications on board ships. Their own ships and the 30000 other ships they service. They bought 50% of the software company Dolittle that had created a framework for edge computing that proved to be an excellent fit for the maritime world. They decided to Open Source their maritime related work under the MIT license and give it all to a foundation. The ShipOS Foundation.
Wilhelmsen Group understood that a ShipOS run as a private closed source initiative would fail. It wouldn't bring the broad benefits to the indsutry. They funded the inception of the foundation hoping that it will deliver a platform they can use to digitalize more services in shipping. But without all the fuss and bureaucracy that often comes along with such initiatives.
A one page charter was created based on a simple voting principle. Any organization that wants to get in on the action and get a say in what gets developed becomes a member. It buys one or more votes for USD 50K per year per vote. Every month the members vote on the features that get worked on the following month. Every other year they vote to elect a Caretaker for the Foundation. The Caretaker manages the membership fees by keeping the Foundation lean and spending the maximum money on developers, ensuring bang for the bucks for the members.
One can also influence what gets into the ShipOS is without paying any money - by contributing code. Even a small startup can get features included in ShipOS, simply by writing great code and submit it to the Foundation for review and inclusion.
Money and code in fusion. In a simple way.
The ShipOS foundation delivers an operating system for ships. Wilhelmsen and others adds a play store atop of the OS ta make it easy for other software providers to launch their applications to the market. Similar to the Android ecosystem for smartphones. And Wilhelmsen Group gets an easy way to reach the broader market with their applications, cutting cost along the way. Like every software and service provider in the maritime industry. Even the disruptive startup.
