The new Star Trek movie is out now and I still haven’t decided whether or not to see it. Overall, I like the franchise, but I’m a bit baffled at why it had to be (re)made in the first place, aside from squeezing more money out of the fans. I’ve been missing original screenplays.

Word-of-mouth seems to be mostly positive, but given the fan-driven nature of the franchise, some of the faithful aren’t happy. Blogs are posted, tweets are twittered, and nits are picked (Graeme McMillan of io9.com has a good run down of reactions). Having a foot in the comics industry makes me no stranger to nerd outrage and to be honest, it’s easy to make fun of the freak show, making it easy to ignore the sheer amount of creativity that often goes with the obsession. 

Trekkers often forget one thing, though. The franchise isn’t theirs.

Stat Trek is owned by Paramount. It doesn’t matter how many conventions are held, how many costumes are worn, or how much fanfic is written. Paramount makes the movies, makes the television shows, and markets the hell out of them with all manner of kitschy products, tie-ins, and knickknacks. Star Trek is a story machine designed to make Paramount money and it only lets the audience participate when it thinks it can profit.

While thinking about the fan mentality, I’ve been wondering if similar principles that guide open source software can work with a fictional universe. Like the Linux operating system under Linus Torvalds, such a universe would have core characters and events shaped by a small team of writers. Fans would be welcome to add, exchange, and modify their ideas as they wish so long as the kernel remains true and they release their results to the rest of the community and, by extension, the public domain, perhaps under a Creative Commons license. The fans would be able to guide the destinies of their own creations with impunity.

Impractical? Perhaps, but both the Trek community and the Linux community have show what can be done with collaboration on a massive scale.