Thousand Parsec (TP) is a free and open source project with the goal of creating a framework for turn-based space empire building games.

Unlike commercial alternatives, it is designed for long games supporting universes as large as the player's computer can handle.

Later, Tim decided to try starting a full open source project to become the "Worldforge" of space empire games.

[8] Progress since late 2006 and early 2007 has been increasing rapidly[9] with a number of new developers joining the project.

The project also went on a recruitment drive by running an AI programming competition [10] and active promotion during linux.conf.au.

Tan told ZDNet Asia: "Returning as a mentor is important to me because this is in keeping with the spirit of the open source community, where I am sharing my knowledge and contributing my expertise to collaborate with other programmers to develop better, more innovative applications."