[cflsystems]

Off topic but... The great powerful guys you mentioned and XC do not make money from their products - they make money from supporting these products and custom code specific customer requests. And since some of these open source developing companies are non-profit they get their financial support from other guys that want to make money out of the open source. 99.9% of the XC mods are ready to use on any store, any server with no additional changes required. And I know most developers will not charge anything if the problem you have is a bug in their software - they will fix it for free.

What is your desktop OS? Is it Windows? MacOS? Or some Linux? First 2 are not free and are encrypted. Linux is free but think about it - will you go in there and change the system yourself or do just small tweaks? The other every day software you use - not free and not open source as well is it? There is no small or big mods, there are mods that work and mods that don't work.

If you code something one time per client's request you will charge them whatever you feel is fair to compensate your time and knowledge - say $200. If you code it to be used by many users your price will not be $200 per user correct? So it all depends. You can't compare price of a mod with per hour charge.

Protecting your work is necessary and there is nothing wrong with that. I am all for open source and free software but this comes at a price too. Developers protect their code so there is no copying or unauthorize use.

Now take a look at XC again - 4.4.x has a lot of modules in it but that is it. No more. Next XC will be a skeleton and all necessary modules for normal shopping cart functionality will be paid modules. From QT. Take a look at the x-cart extras - all of them long time requested and needed features - being offered as paid addons. Next XC will be nothing more but a framework shopping cart. Yes non-encrypted modules (I guess) but it will cost $$$$ to have good, running, with necessary functionality shopping cart, on top of that add the customization + skin... And I won't be suprised if one day XC is encrypted as well with an option for developers to get un-encrypted version for a special price. Nothing wrong with that or is it?

Sorry islndbangles for hijacking the thread. If you want to have some mod and you tink it will benefit your store it doesn;t matter if it's encrypted or not as long as it works for you. But yes as totaltec said - don't get crazy with mods. Get whatever you need.