Starlok, "friends, Romans, countrymen" :P No offence taken :) What I meant was that (from my point of view at least) the reason "free stuff" (be it a character or a program) is produced is to be both of service to "the community" and to put your name in lights, so to speak, to be known and recognised by your peers as having a particular talent. To be good at something. The same is true of the hackers, crackers, phreakers, Virus writers and WaR3z d00dz. Commonly refered to as the computer "underground" the black hats of this world. They too operate to provide a "service" to the community, be it "free" software, a bulletin board on a company site, (that the company isn't aware of) security exploits, or simply "forbidden" information either as ASCII or code. Thier community is far more covert than ours, but it has it's own magazines both virtual and real, and it's stars and wannabe's. They too scheme thier schemes and pull off thier coups with the intention of getting thier name known. The motivations are the same, only the words/deeds change. The fact that most of the really good hackers get straight jobs as security consultants should tell you that the desire to be good can even encompass "normailty" but a good many of the hacker tools out there were written by these people to test thier own systems, then given back to the community. You may work for "the man" but you still provide tools to the underground. Just as full time animators, and professional artists will provide "free stuff" here. When somebody from a games house give you somebody else's game, they're saying, "look at this, isn't it cool" It's the highest form of flattery in the circles in which I travel. I still tell people about QNX (www.qnx.com) because it's just so damn cool! :) Like I said, I've never paid for a piece of pirate software in my life, and I have never sold a piece of pirate software in my life, either. All that I've had, I've both given and taken freely. From the costliest app, to the the smallest and most arcane scrap of knowledge. "Information wants to be free" and what is code more than information? The disk is just the medium on which it's stored/transfered. These days I pay for my software, because I can, if it helps out a "struggling artist" and convinces them to produce more, so much the better :) and while I may offer little in the way of code of "free stuff" I advocate for my tribe, and contribute to legal defense funds when required, I cheer my side from the bleechers, and I share what I know with others, just as I always have. I've lost track of the number of times I've walked into a pub and been accosted by somebody who's heard that I know a lot about computers, and lost another night explaining this or that detail. :) But it's a subject I love, and one I've been immersed in for 20+ years, I'm a "first generation" geek! :) Some of us have to remember who "Hans and Gribble" are... :) So there you go, the usual bombastic, pompous, bollocks, answer your question? ;) later jb