This is the type of thing that really excites me. An Open Source Renewable Energy Project at http://www.shpegs.org:

This is a project to design and build a system that uses a combination of direct and indirect solar collection to generate electricity and store thermal energy in an economical, environmentally friendly, scalable, reliable, efficient and location independent manner using common construction materials.

The project is being managed with a similar methodology to Open Source Software Development and the ideas and contributions are being published openly on the Internet without an attempt to secure patents. The hope is that with an open philosophy that the project shows similar Rapid Application Development and success as Linux and other Open Source Software projects and provides a system that can meet future energy requirements in a sustainable manner.

I’ll be discussing this more shortly.

You may have observed that this blog is posted under a domain name called osenergy.org. OS doesn’t pertain to Operating System, or the Eygptian God Osiris, rather it means Open Source. Open Source Energy defines a methodology rather than a type of energy. However, the methodology, itself, is a very potent form of energy.

Having been involved with Free Software from the early 90’s, it’s easy to infer how a similar approach could be applicable to the development of technologies in a way equally successful. Even this blog you read runs on Free Software, or as the Business World prefers to call, Open Source. Different licenses like to claim to be about one party or another, but ultimately the effect is the same. The essence of software that is freely available is that it is source code that is freely available, or like a nickname I enjoy using, freesource. It’s a beautiful system that quickens the process of development, and enhances the quality of life for millions, if not billions of people.Other sites like the Open Source Energy Network have picked up on this approach in a powerful way. When the future of the environment is at stake, and when the lives of billions of humans, plants and animals are at risk, not to mention the economic stability and the peace of the world, does it make sense to go around technological innovation in the same “Business as usual” sense? Or has the time arrived when the collaboration of the great minds of our world needs to be approached in a free and open manner?

In earlier, prolific times, inventors would come out with similar designs almost at simultaneous times. Although they shared some basic knowledge, ultimately, many were driven by desires to enrich their hard work via patents. It’s these patents that are the driving force today behind huge corporate greed, and literally a direct cause of the inability of large businesses to act in a fully honest and concrete way to address Global Warming. Until we can all work together to build a solution, putting trillions into peace time research solutions rather than wars, and until that time comes when we can base such success on a model not built on greed, we will certainly confine ourselves to solutions that can only slowly prevent the onslaught that our human existence has created in this world.