A call to arms for open-source emergency services software
December 20, 2025 | Built at sunrise with Claude Code
On December 14, 2025, the New York Times published an article about private equity's takeover of fire department software. We read it. Then we did something about it.
$795/year→$5,000+/year
What happens when private equity acquires your software vendor
A group of private equity firms have systematically acquired fire department software companies—platforms serving thousands of departments each. ESO Solutions (backed by Vista Equity Partners, $100B AUM) now controls ~20,000 of America's 30,000 fire departments. The other two major competitors—ImageTrend and First Due—are also PE-backed. When they buy the competition, they raise prices. When departments try to switch, they buy that vendor too. [Read the investigation]
The major vendors are all private equity backed. There is no escape within the commercial market.
Real departments. Real price increases:
ESO acquired Emergency Reporting (serving 7,500 agencies)—then shut it down. When Norfolk asked for their own data to migrate away, ESO demanded $1,200 to export it.
We are building Space or Bust—a project to develop open-source infrastructure for space colonization. We need dispatch systems that work everywhere: on Earth, on the Moon, on Mars. Systems that fail over gracefully from Internet to Starlink to LoRa mesh to ham radio to QR codes.
So we built one. In about three hours. While watching the sunrise, drinking coffee, hanging out with the dog and cat. Using Claude Code.
And we're giving it away. Forever. MIT License.
There are approximately 30,000 fire departments in the United States. 85% are volunteer departments in rural and suburban communities—the ones least able to afford $5,000/year software fees and most dependent on mutual aid coordination. That's roughly 21,000 departments staffed by unpaid volunteers who joined to serve their neighbors, not to subsidize Vista Equity Partners.
Private equity sees 30,000 potential contracts. We see 30,000 communities that deserve better.
Every dollar extracted from a volunteer fire department is a dollar not spent on equipment, training, or personnel. Every price increase is a tax on communities already stretched thin.
You can spend billions acquiring software companies. You can consolidate markets and raise prices. You can extract value from nonprofits and public services.
But maybe there's a workaround for the people you're extracting from.
We can do this in any industry. In any vertical. On Earth or in space. The tools exist. The knowledge exists. The will exists.
Every acquisition you make, every price you raise, every community you squeeze—you're making the case for open source. You're demonstrating why critical infrastructure should never be controlled by entities whose legal obligation is to maximize returns for investors.
Consider how this might affect your future financial valuations.
This is version 0.1. A foundation. Built in hours, not months. It needs:
Code, documentation, testing, funding, spreading the word—it all matters.
Dispatch Protocol is one component of a larger vision. We're building alotallamasOS—an open-source navigation and coordination system designed for environments where connectivity is intermittent and stakes are high. Mars. The Moon. Rural Montana. A structure fire in a dead zone.
The same infrastructure that coordinates rovers on Mars can coordinate engines in rural Nebraska. The same failover logic that handles Earth-Moon communication delays can handle the gap between a fireground and the nearest cell tower.
We're building for space because we're going there. But we're building for Earth first because people need it now.