[1][2] The project was developed by the Open Technology Institute, and development included a $2 million grant from the United States Department of State in 2011 for use as a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), concomitant with the Arab Spring.
[3][independent source needed] It was preliminarily deployed in Detroit in late 2012,[1][2] and launched generally in March 2013.
[4] The project has been called an "Internet in a Suitcase".
[5][6] Commotion 1.0, the first non-beta release, was launched on December 30, 2013.
[7] Commotion relies on several open source projects: OLSR, OpenWrt, OpenBTS, and Serval project.