I use the expression 'for free' deliberately as it's one of my pet hates and like a man with toothache I can't resist giving the offending clause a tweak every now and then.

The real expression for software like drupal is 'opensource' either as one word or two. It is living proof of the generosity and weaknesses of much of mankind: a sort of active anti-globalisation that prevents the big software houses from running off with even more of our hard-earned.

These people make software with more or less the same capabilities as expensive proprietary stuff and give it away 'for free'. To us, the users, this is entirely positive.

Opensourcers create marvelous software and give it away. What they don't do nearly so well is to support it with documentation and to cure the inevitable bugs. Still we use it here at retired but Active because it helps us to run the site cheaply and without direct commercial ties to limit what we can say or do.

The main packages we use are:

• Drupal to structure the site
• Gimp to do the artwork
• Filezilla to move stuff back and forth between the site and our pcs

• Gallery2 for the Picture Gallery.

Anyway, what's the point of all this guff - well given the opensource maintenance record, every now and again you'll find that something on the site doesn't work - and we're sorry but that's what happens when something like RbA is 'for free'.