But who will clean the drains?

My dad went to architectural school in London during the social upheaval of the late '50s, when the world was still in black and white, Britain's imperial pretensions lay in tatters, Elvis had yet to discover burgers and common folk first rubbed shoulders with the ruling elite at universities across the land.

He tells a story from this era (in a detailed and meandering dad-fashion) about a well-to-do left-wing university lecturer who had his keenest, earnest and radicalest students around for afternoon tea. His wife was even more well-to-do, and in the midst of one heated anarcho-communist discussion was heard to utter in exasperation "Communism is all very well but who will clean the drains?".

I had an analagous experience synching my Sony Ericsson phone with the Evolution mail client. Initially the synchronisation worked but then subsequently failed, and I ended up installing Windows temporarily to transfer all my contacts over.

Unless people are somehow paid to do the dirty work (and synchronising address books, vCards, CSVs, TSVs, .mab's etc etc is surely up there), will the drains ever be clean for a regular user? To paraphrase the quote: "Free Software is all very well but who will synchronise the address books?".