3DR Announces Launch of the Dronecode Foundation

From the beginning 3DR has been committed to open source development. This is the 21st century lesson in innovation: moving fast means moving together. To that end, we’ve proudly supported a vibrant global community of brilliant and selfless developers who over the past seven years have been responsible for some amazing achievements in aerial robotics, not the least of which is the APM/Pixhawk platform that’s since been adopted by over 100,000 users. Because of this exponential explosion in platform adoption and community membership, it’s now time to organize our community and give our flight code a proper home.

That’s why we’re proud to announce today the official launch of the Dronecode Foundation, an open source, collaborative project that brings together existing and future open source drone projects under a nonprofit structure governed by the Linux Foundation. The result will be a common, shared open source platform for UAVs that will be home for both the code and the community.

The Dronecode Foundation will encourage the development of open source consumer and commercial UAV software by building and supporting a community of developers and providing them the resources and tools to help them innovate. The ultimate goal is to maximize adoption of the project’s code for the benefit of users by developing cheaper, better and more reliable UAV software.

“Dronecode will allow companies to participate in UAV development in a more formal way,” wrote 3DR CEO Chris Anderson in a welcome piece on the Dronecode blog. “These companies can then contribute back to the community in everything from code to people power to financial resources. This is why I’m particularly delighted to welcome our company launch partners, including such giants as Intel, Qualcomm, Box and Baidu in addition to UAV leaders such as Yuneec, Walkera and of course, 3D Robotics.”

Dronecode is lucky to stand on the shoulders of 20+ years of open source development, thanks in large part to the Linux

Foundation. Linux brings the necessary experience to bear on the project so that it has a clear structure, transparent processes and criteria for memberships ranging from free developers to corporate. It also offers a clear path for corporate participation and platform adoption while protecting open source ideals, and the experience and reputation of the Linux Foundation ensures that those values will be embraced and preserved as the industry around them grows. And in the interest of preserving the open code, the Dronecode Foundation can now even extend specific closed source licenses or, if need be, hold copyright.

“There is no better organization to lead this than the Linux Foundation,” Chris continued. “Not just because of the extraordinary success of Linux itself, but also because of all the other collaborative projects that it helps run, allowing each to reach the next level of participation, performance and innovation. I can’t wait to see what this community creates next.”

Learn more about Dronecode here.