Trust me, though I love open source and probably could throw together my own chat applet in a few days, cgi based chats are not really real-time and use an alot of cpu resources for the service they provide. Plus you will appreciate the applet I want to purchase, which is a true IRC applet which means you can connect with any chat client (like mIRC or BitchX for you IRC junkies), and I can install any open source ircd on the box. I can also install any old IRC bot, and maybe even hack it a bit so that it can authenticate irc users off the vbulletin database and give moderators ops in the chat.
I got some loose cash from the donations yesterday so I am going to purchase the applet sometime today.