Open source
The code behind 32°N is public. Here’s why that matters on your boat.
You don’t need to read a line of it to use 32°N. But it’s worth understanding what “open source” actually buys you — because it changes what happens to your boat’s systems ten or twenty years from now, long after any one company, including mine, is still around to answer for it.
Jump straight to the licence ↓In plain English
What “open source” actually means
Most software is a locked box. You can use it, but you can’t see inside it, and only the company that made it can change it or fix it. Open source is the opposite: every bit of code that makes 32°N work is published, in the open, for anyone to read. Anyone can look at it, copy it, change it, or run their own version. Nobody holds an exclusive key to it — not the company, not even me.
| Question | Closed source | Open source |
|---|---|---|
| Who can see the code | Only the company that wrote it. | Anyone. It’s public. |
| Who can fix a problem | Only that company, if they choose to. | Anyone with the skills — you, a contractor, another developer entirely. |
| What happens if the company folds | The software stops improving, then stops working. | The code doesn’t disappear. Someone else can pick it up. |
| What it costs to keep running | Whatever they decide to charge, whenever they decide to. | Free to use — and that permission never expires. |
Why it matters on a boat
Your boat will likely outlast the company that made your electronics
A well-kept boat runs for thirty or forty years. Software companies don’t. They get bought, they pivot to a different market, they quietly stop updating the model you already own, or they close down entirely. When that happens to closed software, the chartplotter or instrument you paid for can stop getting updates — sometimes it stops working at all. Open source doesn’t promise that 32°N the company will always exist. It promises the code will.
You actually own it
Once it’s on your boat, it’s yours. There’s no subscription someone else can switch off, and no vendor who can lock you out of your own systems.
It outlives any one company
32°N’s continuity doesn’t depend on me staying in business. If I stop working on it, get bought, or lose interest, the code is still there for someone else — including you — to carry on.
You can check what it actually does
Every claim I make about privacy or safety can be checked against the real code, by anyone with the skills, rather than taken on my word.
Run it yourself, if you’d rather
You’re not required to trust my servers or my support. Take the code and run the whole thing on your own hardware, under your own control.
To be clear
What open source doesn’t mean
- Not something you have to build yourself. 32°N is a finished product you install and use — the same as anything else on the market.
- Not lower quality. Some of the most trusted software in the world — the kind running banks, hospitals, and most of the internet — is open source. Being public doesn’t make it amateur.
- Not something you need to know how to code for. You never have to look at a line of it to use 32°N. The code being open is for the people who want to look, not a requirement for the people who don’t.
- Not a kit you assemble. Install it, connect it to your boat’s systems, and it works — out of the box, same as any product you’d buy off a shelf.
The legal bit, plainly
MIT. Do what you like with it.
32°N is licensed under MIT — one of the most permissive open-source licences there is. In plain English: you can use it, copy it, change it, give it away, or build something new on top of it, and nobody, including me, can stop you or charge you for the privilege.
That permission is written into the licence itself, so it doesn’t depend on 32°N staying in business, or on me keeping my word. Once code is released this way, it stays free to use — nobody can take that back.
Free to use, copy, and change — for as long as anyone wants to.
If you want more detail
There’s a deeper version of this for developers
If you’re technical, or just curious, there’s a longer page that covers the architecture, the repository, and exactly how you’d run it yourself.
Go to the developer page