Open Source Software for Flight Controllers
Compatible configurator can be found at https://flightone.us/configurator/0.324.0/
When we first started RaceFlight One, we had great ideals. We wanted to make the best flying firmware available, while at the same time making it the easiest to setup and configure. I feel we are doing a great job hitting these goals.
I had also hoped to make us be able to work with the open source collective, while at the same time protecting some of the technology that made us more unique. Unfortunately, I received a lot of internal push back on these goals, so we decided to go completely closed source. Our original ideals still hold true, and thus we have decided to release our code under a new license in the hopes of making a step towards this goal.
I have decided to release the code base, from the point in time, that was without our permission released to the public, as a MIT license. We aren’t completely releasing everything we have done, but anything up to this point in history is being released to the public. I know the person who original broadcast it on the internet had expressed this is the license he wished we could release the code under. After much peer review, and replacement of one small function, our attorneys have told me this is something we are now able to accomplish. MIT is a completely unrestricted license, which allows anyone to do just about anything they want with the code base. The only requirements is giving some credit to the original developers. This license is very compatible with GPL, LGPL, and every other open source license on the planet. Which means this code can be used in ANY project, for ANY reason. This I believe is a TRUE open source license, and its one I am more than happy to support.
Hopefully this will foster more innovation, and greater growth for our industry. We are also willing to support this going forward, and incorporate any technology back into our main code base, while at the same time keep any contributions completely open source. This hopefully will be the first step towards working more openly with other projects, and the open source community as a whole.
When we first started on RaceFlight One, we initially discussed the fact that our name would confuse people who don’t just race. We have a long history of being used by many of the top racers, and are currently dominating in the racing market. In the past few months we have rapidly been growing our racing user base, as well as adding many amazing racers to our team. Adding racewrs like Min Chan and Alex Vanover, along side of our existing racers like Shaun Taylor, Gil Coronado, and many other racers has allowed us to constantly not only podium, but win most of the big racers our pilots have entered. There are even a few other well known racers now running RaceFlight One hardware and software as well. We love the race community and we will always be pushing innovation in that space.
The problem is our software and hardware is also amazing for new users, and freestyle as well. We are proud to have amazing freestylers like Jonathon Davis aka Skitzo, Nick Willard aka Wild Willy, and Johnny Schaer, and many other amazing freestyle pilots on our team. Being branded as RaceFlight One has held back our adoption rate in other markets. Users are confused on their choice of firmware and hardware, because they are not intending to race with their quadcopters.
We have decided to do a rebranding, it will help further us in this industry. We have big things on the horizon, and having a more universal name will allow us to spread faster and further in new markets, as well as giving us a more universal identity.
With the new release of our release candidate, we are now going to rebrand the software as Flight One, dropping Race from our name. We hope to quickly get to version 1.0 of our firmware, with only bug fixes being implemented in any new builds going forward. Any new features will be worked on in a separate v1.1 branch, and we will quickly move to v1.0 once we have given everyone a chance to test the current release candidate, and fix any bugs that are found.