Tesla Motors is going Open Source.

Tesla Motor's CEO  Elon Musk put out a short statement on the car makers website June 12th 2014. This statement was to address the decision to completely release all of the patents currently held by Tesla Motors. This is a great step forward in the effort to bring the zero emission and alternate fuel based vehicles into a better field of collaboration and competition. In the economics study of the Austrian field competition is seen as a great motivator to reduced prices and better services. I hope with this in mind more companies seek to not try and hold onto patents but allow open sourcing to make great strides in not only the competition area but also in the technological advancements area. Below is the letter written by Mr. Musk explaining his decision in a bit more detail and reasons why this move was made. 

"Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.
Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.
When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible.
At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales.
At best, the large automakers are producing electric cars with limited range in limited volume. Some produce no zero emission cars at all.
Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.
We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform.
Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard."

Doing this Tesla Motors has opened the doors for innovators and engineers to review and modify the original plans and designs of the motor company's model lines. In the hopes that these "outside eyes" see what can be done to make the cars better, safer, or all around redesign the looks.

 Tesla Motors is leading the way in the new era of innovation and collaboration for car makers, and I for one am ecstatic about the future of this concept. Imagine if every patent were released for open source. Imagine the college engineering students getting together with the Medical students to design and build a better prosthetic organ. Imagine the advancements we could see when the ideas and processes are open for peer review and  public review. Adding your ideas into a larger concept that can literally change the world and history as we know it.

But many people are against the idea of open sourcing and not patenting works and ideas. While many hold a belief in patents and copyrights being a foundational  need in society, there are those that dispel this myth and make the case for open dispersion of ideas.

Stephen Kinsella, a Patent Attorney who has rethought his stance on the use and viability of patents after consideration as to what the actual patent or copyright does has much to say on this topic.His books and articles explain these issues better. Patents said to be a protection of the original creator of any ideas, but they also have the effect as to limit and restrict any others from ever reproducing this thing later on even with their own property. It is a violation of the rights of use of another mans property.

This point can be seen clearly by those who reject the act of restricting rights of men for any reason and therefor is not a universal thought. The act of restricting what any other person can do with their property because a man has had a state give him a numbered file in a bureaucrats office.

Tesla Motors, for me, is moving the game to a whole new level and I am excited to see what the world makes of these cars with their new ability to redesign and innovate using the car as their base.