THINGS TO UNDERSTAND
  * you will save time, dollars and hassels using Glean to represent your ideas rather than trying to DIY
  * supporting glean supports tradelink.org development
  * it costs far less to support glean users than tradelink, as such no support or assistance is provided to open source users.
  * users who contribute code back to tradelink.org can join an open source mailing list to share patches and discuss improvements.

IN SHORT
  * glean is better for everybody, the vast majority of the time and better for vast majority all of the time.
  * you can't believe in open source without supporting it, which means using glean.
  * if you're super hard core and want to do awesome OSS stuff, go for it but share your results back. 
  
IF YOU GET IT AND WANT TO CONTINUE :

https://code.google.com/p/tradelink/wiki/TradeLinkBuild

MORE INFORMATION :
  * http://faq.tradelink.org
  * glean user questions http://community.tradelink.org
  * private contributor forum : https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tradelink-users