>Is money the only factor through which one can contribute here ??? Currently off course my company is paying for my membership but say if I’m independtly working and not in a financial position to pay for PUTM, Does that means if I don’t pay I’m not contributing anything…

I apologize - I guess that there's an error here, since You don't show up as a PUTM. Or should you be inquring with your company's accounting department to see why they haven't paid your PUTM fees?

I pay my own PUTM fees. I also pay for my own MSDN subscription for different reasons related to intellectual property rights. The critical thing is I pay for the tools and services I rely on to pay the bills, regardless of whether I'm operating under the auspices of full- or part-time employment, or operating independently.

The argument you make is specious. From what you're saying, poor, independent programmers shoudln't have to pay for their tools? If I'm an independent contractor, I guess you feel that I shouldn't have to pay for anything - operating systems, compilers, MS Office, or for that matter, hardware! I like this idea - if you don't work for someone, but you want to work with VFP, Microsoft, Intel et al should give you everything you'd like to use for free. Just plead poverty...

The concept doesn't work from what i can see. And I though communism had flaws!