Perhaps the following story will help illustrate my point. Living in Moscow, Russia in my teenage years I decided that in order to succeed in the world I would need to become fluent in English. Most people in my situation would spend large amounts of money on various courses, tutors, learning programs, etc. It was not something I could afford, so I turned to an equivalent of the open-source solution - my short wave radio. Soon I discovered another "open-source" solution. I realized that all those Americans walking around Moscow would be able to perfectly pronounce the name of every object I pointed at. In most cases, they would at least have a hunch on how to spell it well enough for me to find it in my dictionary later. However, this required that I do some homework first - acquire some basic vocabulary, understand a few core grammatical concepts, and polish off my accent well enough to be understood. There was also a psychological aspect - I had to overcome the fear of talking to strangers in a foreign language I did not speak well. There was a price, although it was not paid in money but instead with the currency I actually possessed - time and effort.
So going back to software. There is always going to be a price for a solution. The question is what currency you are going to pay it with.
-- Sasha Pachev Create online surveys at http://www.surveyz.com/
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