Today, Oil is to energy what Microsoft Software was to Desktop Computing a few years ago.

A Profitable Monopoly.

Alternative Energy needs to be open-sourced.

Desperately.

Now.

Vinod Khosla has been quoted in the The Economist as saying that at the World Economic Forum in Davos a few months ago, after his presentation advocating the reduction in dependency of the US on foreign oil imports, a Middle East OPEC Country Minister came up and whispered to him "It cost us just US $ 1 to produce a barrel of oil today. The minute you come up with a viable alternative source of energy that will threaten us, we shall just drop our prices."

Just as Open Sourcing of software beginning with Linux has been a market challenge to the monopoly of a few software manufacturers, the shape and direction of the hunt for alternative energy sources needs to follow the open source platform.

Open sourcing is about price as well as features independence from monopolies.

In the alternative energy space, solar, wind, ethanol and other sources would make us free from the profitable oil 'Monopoly' game of a few nations.

(By the way, I love Microsoft software and am a great admirer of the company's and it's founder's marketing and technological depth.)