Those users, Gonzalez said, will have difficulty finding experts willing to work with them. The rating system also lets customers see which consultants have high ratings for questions in a particular field. If one consultant has answered more Apache questions than any other, for example, a user will likely want to go to him for his expertise on that software. QuestionExchange offers users a great deal of control. Not only does the user name his price, but he also establishes a deadline and determines who sees his inquiry.
Customers can even define which experts are going to receive their questions.
The site also gives the user some quality control. QuestionExchange offers a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee, Gonzalez said, which ensures that the customer will get all of his money back if he is not satisfied with his answer. Qualified experts QuestionExchange's technical consultants are programmers, system administrators, and other experts from the international open source community, according to Gonzalez . Many are Linux experts who have written a portion of the operating system. According to Gonzalez, QuestionExchange's database of consultants currently numbers over 1,000.