“I am good in arts, drawing and colors. But, I don’t have any income. If I were a man, at least I could go out and draw the images of politicians and cinema actors on the walls and earn a few hundred Rupees a month,” said Indira in a bitter voice.

“It does not help you a bit to think about what you are not. Here is a super secret to attract income opportunities. If you give up your depression, forget your problems and concentrate on what you have, you will discover many income opportunities,” I told her. “Your words give me a great mental comfort. But, will they make me earn money? I have basic computer skills. Will these skills be of any use to me and to others?” she asked.

“Do you know what open source software is?” I asked her. “I think it is free software. I don’t know beyond that,” she replied.

“Open source software is computer software whose source code is available under a license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. It is often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Technically speaking, Open Source Programs may be available for free of cost or may not. Practically speaking, almost all of them are available for free. As there are millions of users for these programs, it opens up interesting income opportunities for people like you,” I said.

“I don’t understand. When any one can get these programs for free, where is there an opening to make money? ” Indira asked. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that every programmer in possession of good programming skills must be in want of aesthetic sense and graphical skills! Or at least that's what Jane Austen might have written had she been talking to you about income opportunities. Software programming requires logic and graphics designing needs creativity. Logic and creativity are contradictory but complimentary. Take any popular open source program that has hundreds of useful features and you will find the user interface to be poor and user-inimical. If you design templates, themes and skins for these programs you can make money,” I said.

She said, “I have two questions. Don’t I need to know programming to design templates?” I replied, “You need to understand web designing and related technologies such as CSS and XHTML. An intelligent woman like you can easily become a master of these technologies in a matter of a month. It is not necessary for you to be a programmer to create templates. If you understand how the program works and displays output, you can create templates. Some programs may require you to use a few lines of code. You can hire someone to write that code. Our country has got millions of engineers.”

Indira asked, “Do you want me to believe that this opportunity has not been noticed by anyone?” I said, “Many intelligent computer graphics designers have spotted such opportunities and they are making truck loads of money. Joomla is a popular open source content management system. Hundreds of designers are creating templates for it or reselling the templates and making money. For example, a year ago Joomlart.com started to sell templates. So far they have sold to more than 8000 customers and have earned more than 200000 dollars. You can check these figures in their website. If you really have an eye for design, can’t you earn a small amount of Rs.5,000 a month?”

“That’s inspiring. Do you suggest that I should create templates for Joomla?” she asked. I replied, “No. With your limited skills and resources, you will find it very difficult to compete with sharks. Please do some research on open source programs and concentrate on the programs that are just gaining popularity. For example, Drupal is an excellent content management program. Many believe it is much better than Joomla. But there are very few good templates for it in the market. If you create a few nice themes for Drupal and market it through a website, you will find hundreds of customers from different parts of the world in a matter of a few months. In fact I am in need of good colorful templates for Drupal for a few of my projects. If you can create templates for it and if it is of high quality, I will not hesitate to buy it from you for Rs.5,000.”

“I will meet you after a month or two with my template for Drupal and make you my first customer,” Indira said happily.