This might be off point but this thread sounds like economics 101. Knowledge is one of the most valuable assets a company in our industry has. The main difference between a trunk slammer who statistically will be out of business within a year and a successful operation like ZoneOne (and others) is KNOWLEDLGE.
The free flow of information is something that can benefit everybody and I am all for it. But when you are trying to make a living for yourself, your family and the people that work with you, the success of your business is a totally different. Trade secrets and experience are real assets with a high value (Yes! I’m referring to dollars).
I write software for a living. I would have no problem telling somebody how to create a dialog box in Windows, that is common knowledge. However, telling them how write an application that captures IR commands is something I would not do. That is something that a private company paid me to do for them. I don’t think I have the right to give or sale it.
Asking an installer about a component and what a problem might be is one thing. Asking an installer where the cheapest place to buy that component is something totally different. One of the most frequent comments I hear is that a customer buys a big screen TV from a local discount store and the next day they call the installer to setup it for them. I have no idea what you should do in this case.
The point here is that there is a difference between common knowledge and hard "earned" knowledge.
CEDIA should offer a class that talks about competing with local discount stores and the Internet. For a price of course.
ZoneOne – the next time you go to Paris for the weekend, can you bring me a Crescant?
