Before I trype anything else, I should say that this is not legal advice, and I am not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination. I am not suggesting that any do (or refrain from doing) anything based on my words... which are merely opinon.

The position of FK's administration is that pricing is not to be discussed on this forum. While that is a perfectly reasonable policy that we all should adhere to, the comment has been made (over and over) that dicussion of pricing amongst members of a profession is illegal in the US.

The reason for the question of legality is that such discussions raise the question of price fixing. From the research I've done, it seems that in order to establish a discussion as an attempt to engage in price fixing, there are a two key tests that need to be satisified.

1. The determination of whether the discussion of price was with the intention of altering pricing based on the discussion.

2. The determination that a significant percentage of industry professionals were involved in the discussion.

The second test is the one that is of particular interest to me. First, we need to define what our "industry" actually is. If you go by the business codes provided by the IRS, you'll not find a "web developer", "flash developer", or any other specific type of media developer industry. It seems that we are lumped into one of the computer sciences or general media categories. Since we are part of a larger industry, there is real question as to what percentage of the industry we are part of is represented here at FK.

If you take the thousands upon thousands of professionals in any of the given categories we apply to, it quickly becomes apparent that we are not a significant percentage. If you reduce that to those who are FK members, it would seem that there would/could not be an adequate percentage of the industry participating in the discussion to establish a case of price fixing.

All that said, we should still respect FK's policy of not discussing pricing, but we should understand that such discussions may not be an automatic case of price fixing.