Help Your Local Fire Department Develop Low Cost Software (COER Project)

On December 14, 2025 The New York Times and others published reports private equity group Vista Equity Partners has nearly cornered the market on emergency response software in the United States. The report described a rural volunteer fire department with a small tax base being charged seven times more once the new company, ESO Solutions took over. At the Network Theory Applied Research Insttitue, we identify this as a form of technofeudalism, just the sort of thing our Municipal Counter Automation Strategy is designed to combat. We're developing an open-source version of that software for fire departments everywhere and we need your help to do it.

Here's the method. As a specification collector, you will visit a local fire department (or several), interview staff/leadership about their operations and software tools, observe the software's functions (what it allows the firefighters to accomplish), then send it to us. We're assembling a second group of volunteers to review your specifications and recreate those functions in an AGPL-3 licensed platform. This license does two things: first it allows anyone to inspect, copy, edit, and redistribute the source code at will. Second, it requires that when software is edited, it is also released with the same freedom of access, even if it is run as a service on a private server. This sets departments up for the future. As emergency response demands change at the local level, departments customize their software without waiting on outside entities to do it for them or paying inflated rent on a one-size-fits-all platform.

Next, we'll have our attorneys review documentation to ensure the clean-room process was followed properly. Then it's show time! We'll release the software free, assisting remotely with hosting and modification while encouraging departments to hire local developers to maintain security, modify software, and and manage hosting. Fire departments and the communities they serve no longer have to pay rent to venture capitalists, or worry about big targets like ESO Solutions being hacked. All they pay for, is local hosting on their own Small Form Factor server and the regular or occasional employment of an IT specialist or software developer. This is part of NTARI's Municipal Counter Automation Strategy. You are the foundation of these efforts to secure the future of the internet from technofeudalism. That makes you pretty awesome!

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