Originally published at: Open Source Heater Building - Firespeaking
Progress is made painfully slowly by isolated individuals and small artesan companies each having to invent and build the wheel themselves. To the extent that each can make contributions to the overall body of knowledge and benefit from the shared resources that result, it might be possible to gather more momentum for this interesting and resilient technology. This article explores the potential for an open-source approach in masonry heater design and construction.
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Capitalizing on ideas has always been an impediment to progress on a tribal level. Capitalizing on skill has produced the greatest works of art and science known to the world. For example, few people realize that the vast majority of the server infrastructure on the WWW is all free (as in free beer) open source, Linux based software (Apache Servers). The capacity to build and manage the service is how the software gains credibility and support. Every major software corporation (IBM, CISCO etc.) contributes to the development of open source server software. It is the skill to develop and manage the software that supports its advocates. That is how the Linux Foundation came into being.
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