Everyone is overlooking the obvious...

If the idea works and there is no patent sell kits and give away plans. There will always be people like us willing to spend a few hundred dollars to confirm or replicate anything that looks interesting.

Money does enter the equation, but the trick is not allowing "profit" to enter the equation. If you are making your money back for time and materials. Then why would you even consider selling the intelectual rights? That is what you would need to do to get something mass produced. No bank would give any of us enough nest egg to launch a manufacturing plant for a house, and no manufacturer will build it unless they own the idea or have sole distributorship rights and lincencing. To get that far everyone needs to know the idea works first. Look at Steron as an example... Public disclosure and validation by third parties, then move to distribution. I'm just looking at it from a poor mans scope of operation. If we give plans away for free and sell working concept kits. The funding and ability to bring the idea to market will come eventually. It may not be done by the inventor or benefit him in anyway, but thats not important to me. The ONLY important issue here is that the technology itself is released for use by the common man.

If that idealogy sounds insane to you then it IS greed that is the problem. JP Morgan and Westing house funded Tesla for decades, and when he created a way to wirelessly transmit power to the whole world they had no choice but to burn down his lab. You see they would never make back their investment by releasing the technology and it would also hurt the copper industry they ran. So as you see the only way they could make their money back was to hide the technology and forget its existance. You may see not see that story as a fitting analogy, but its the same reaction for the same intentions. As soon people get used to the idea that this will change everything, they will then realize the money doesn't matter.

~Dingus