I’m excited today to hand over the reigns of Local Orbit to Farm Link Hawaii, which has been a long time Local Orbit customer, and to announce an exciting new open source project, Mahina.
Rob Barreca, the Founder/Director of Farm Link, is a farmer, fermented foods producer, and food hub director. Prior to becoming a local food entrepreneur, he worked as a software developer, product manager, and founder at multiple technology companies.
The Farm Link team will run the Local Orbit software subscription service that currently supports over 20,000 buyers and suppliers across North America who are building healthier, more sustainable local food systems for all of us.
Farm Link will also manage a new project, Mahina, which will be an open source repository based on the code we’ve developed for Local Orbit over the past 6 years. This is an unprecedented opportunity to enable local food entrepreneurs to accelerate collaboration and continued development of the most flexible and user-friendly software available for local food businesses anywhere in the world.
Local Orbit has laid the foundation for integrations, add-on modules, new work flows, and more. The Mahina platform will be a powerful tool for business innovation across evolving local food systems. Mahina will be available under the MIT Open Source License.
I’m excited to see where Farm Link and the Mahina open source community will take the tools we’ve created as local supply chains grow and evolve. Local Orbit partners Kate Barker, Andy Bass and I are working closely with Farm Link to ensure a seamless transition with no disruption to customers – and no service or pricing changes in 2018. You won’t notice any changes, 
apart from your new customer support team and updated Terms of Service.
Please reach out to service@localorbit.com with any questions you have.
It’s been our great pleasure to support the inspiring work you do to build a healthier, more sustainable food system.