Wow! I'm half afraid to butt in on this thread. I agree with everybody. A big problem I think is the misaprehension that every piece of software and every dot.com means big money. 1. When you can't afford a product it is easy to think that the people who can are driving up the price but not realize that the company might actually sell the product cheaper if they could afford to (though I do think for every licensed $600 copy of Photoshop there must be 6 illegal users who would have bought it legitimatly for $100). Some of the greatest software ever has been a bust for the company that produced it (Aprentice by Delta Toa for instance), the costs of software development can be staggering. 2. When you see an endevor like this forum that doesn't constantly beg for donations its hard to remeber all the disk space and bandwidth that must be paid for and thousands of hours which must be donated. You see the privledge of an open community unfettered by censorship and are afraid commerce will currupt it... but still, is the shop worse than banners? The bills do have to be paid, and if the people making the forum happen have demonstrated thier integrety in the past, give them a fair chance to prove they can maintain it even when comerce is introduced. 3. Most things on the web don't make money, we should ALL be happy if the Shop succedes in contributing some to the cost of maintaining this site and brings just a little finacial renumeration to those people who have already contributed so much. 4. Please excuse my aweful spelling. 5. Please, don't be mad at me anyone, I'm such a nice guy ;)