FreeGreen offers free house plans

One of the free designs offered on FreeGreen.com.

The idea of “open source” was once the domain of software geeks and hackers working with freely available and imminently changeable software, such as the operating system Linux. A couple of Bostonians with backgrounds in architecture and green building consulting believe that providing open source—both for free and with a cost—green building plans will become a profitable business.

Charlestown-based FreeGreen.com, which co-founder and CEO, David Wax insists is an information and media company, not a green building one, first offered its own green building design plans for free in April 2008. Almost a year later, it opened the site to architects who wanted to upload their own designs, allowing them to price each design as they saw fit. Wax says the open source side of the business serves two purposes. First, FreeGreen.com is now stocked with much more fresh content than its staff could ever hope to generate. The site also brought more architects into the FreeGreen fold.

“It can be offensive to the architecture community that we're giving away what people used to make a living at,” he says.

The bulk of the company’s revenues, which Wax would not release, come mostly from paid product placements in the free building plans designed by the company. But it’s not easy money in the bank; FreeGreen is selective about the products included in its plans. The company’s staff judges products based on both its experience with the product and the product’s point value in a variety of green building rating systems.

Open source plans at FreeGreen.com also contribute a bit to FreeGreen revenue stream. Architects can upload designs and set their price from nothing to thousands of dollars. These plans do not include product placements. Instead, FreeGreen takes 20 percent off the top of each sale, which it says is much less than what other building plan Web sites charge.

All the plans on Freegreen.com are designed to reduce energy use by 30 percent to 50 percent over local code requirements if they are built with suggested products and techniques, according to Wax. But users are not required to do so.