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star trek - Was LCARS derived from an open-source codebase?


It's a well-established part of canon that humans in the 23rd+ century Star Trek universe work to better themselves and the rest of humanity, and have largely done away with the profit motive. It seems reasonable to conclude that all software development at this time is effectively free and open source, though the exact distribution mechanisms would of course differ greatly from the present day.


However, I'm wondering if this applies as well to military technology used by Starfleet (ie the LCARS computer system employed in the 24th century and beyond). This seems like a minimalist system which changes very little and is vulnerable to hacking/tampering - this smacks of a proprietary non-free model, which clearly is out of place in the ideals of the Federation.


I personally imagine LCARS to be something like a fork of a common kernel/set of components which Starfleet retains control over. It would, after all, be benficial to standardise the fleet on one OS to ease maintenance.


Has this ever been addressed in canon (as a throwaway line in an episode, perhaps?) or in semi-canon like books/graphic novels? Just wondering.




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