Ok can I just say i may get flammed for this however would like to agree with certain points the OP has said - however also agree with all of the coders with some points they have brought up.

I agree that coders/developers have lives and families and that stuff is not free, you need to pay for electricity, food, petrol etc please do not get me wrong I definatly agree with all of that and have no issues with you guys charging some cash to earn enough to pay for those items.

I do agree that some addons do seem over priced - however with the amount of work that goes into them i do agree that they deserve to charge for items. The one thing that really annoys me is the fact that a coder releases "Lite" version of their products.

You install it - and it seems perfect for your forums - whether your trying to make money through your forums or not - you go to the developers/coders website (as they do not support their lite versions only premium) and want to pay for the premium version - but to do that you need to first buy membership - so after uming and aarring you buy membership, you then purchase the script hoping that your forums are going to take off now that you have the full version of it - however you go to install and there is a line of code missing etc and the mod doesnt work.

so you trek back to the developers website and its completly dead - no new posts - you log in and all of a sudden you can not post, you submit support tickets and nothing. I could sit here and rattle of a number of mods that this has happened with but am not here to start arguements.

I agree with the OP about the encryption - HOLD ON A SECOND AND READ - I completly agree that developers/coders should be able to protect their work, and stand behind them 100% - however I do not like licensing systems - where my website has to communicate with their site to keep the mod working - i do not like the idea of that because if something does happen to their website etc this mod is useless.

you will not get flammed , you have the opinion of the client, which is what the OP is wrong when he talk with the voice of the coder, but that's all.. :)

I didn't read this entire thread as I do not have that kind of time right now. I did however read the first post and want to comment on it.

If you run a search on the threads and posts I have created on this site, you will find that I was a complete noob to coding when I started working with vBulletin. During that time frame, I too was like a welfare child and wanted everything given to me for free. The concept of paying for modifications was insane and shouldn't exist. As I said, I was like the typical welfare child.

As my knowledge of vBulletin increased, and I started to learn how to manipulate the code, so too did my outlook on "free" stuff. Once you start coding your own modifications and see the hours you invest in it, giving it away doesn't seem logical anymore.

If you want to see stuff given away, learn to code and give it away. Don't complain about the coders who are charging. You seem to think that their knowledge and time should be given away, or should cost what YOU think its worth. You couldn't have a more ignorant arguement if you tried.

Everyone wants their website to be unique from their competitors. The unique site that functions the best will get the most traffic. If your site is monetized, this means that your site will also get more funding. If everything was cheap or free, every site would be pretty much the same. I know I don't want my site looking like everyone elses.

The cheap people out there (I was one of them) want to be able to have everything those that invest in their sites have. They want all of this at rock bottom prices, or free. They are like those people who are on welfare and somehow feel that everyone else should eat the costs for their stuff.

If you want something for your site, buy it. Stop whining about how you can't get it free and grow up already. If you want it for free, go to school and become a programmer. After you have your degree and can code these modifications yourself, come back to the site and release a version for free of every paid modification. I can 100% guarantee that you will never do that, and you would never be able to support the modifications.

I can also guarantee that if you do begin releasing those mods, you will come across many users who do nothing but complain that you are missing features, don't offer fast enough support, and that though its free it could/should be better than what it is.

Like I have been saying, your argement is almost exactly comparable to the welfare system here in the U.S. You want everything for nothing.

(Start releasing those mods, and I mean all of them that are comparable to the paid mods, and you will confirm what I am saying.)

well seems to work just fine for a lot of people as i live in a country that bows to people who want everything for free.

I can see both sides of the story - why each side is right - some mods to come overpriced, or like i said in my previous post you pay for it and it never gets released - or release dates continuously delayed, however i do believe coders should be paid for their effort.

Which is why I am saving up my money (which isn't easy in this current global economic epidemic, as well as having a wife, a young son and recovering from a knee reconstruction) in order to pay a coder for two mods i would like created - i am not going to say they are easy because i do not know how long it would take - but i strongly believe coders should be paid for their services- and i do admire the ones who release their mods for free i just wish there were more quality premium mods out there rather than people starting up sites that you join then crashing - or selling it off to someone else who does nothing with it. (vbgeek for one their mods are still in development, they start new mods before the one people want is actually created and only support u get is - i am not releasing a release date however great progress has been made - that has been for the last 9 months)

I know this is a little late coming, but I just stumbled across this article and wanted to point something out.

The OP mentions that some paid modifications cost the same, or more than the stock vbulletin software does. This is to be expected; the OP referenced buying game consoles and software for them, but glossed over the concept of cars and car modifications entirely because that analogy would defeat the purpose of his rant.

When you purchase a car, often, if you enjoy modifying the vehicle, or wish to rebuild the vehicle more to your preferences, you may end up spending more than the car is valued at to accomplish your ends. Yes, you read that right. You may end up buying a new engine, new transmission, new electric system, new tires, new axles, but retain the body of the car and some of the more trivial performance enhancing systems that the car is built with. If you make such an undertaking, you don't complain that the engine, transmission, and electric system is more expensive than what you paid for the car, or that painting the car costs approximately 20% of what you paid because you insisted on having a fully custom job done that took three months to complete, because the end result is what you wanted, and you're happy to pay for that service.

In terms of aggregate supply and demand, services like that are expensive. If only one custom car shop exists, it becomes even more expensive because there is no other alternative for customization other than simply doing it yourself. If you don't have the knowledge and expertise to swap out an engine, or paint artist renderings on your vehicle without destroying something or mangling the paintjob, then you have to turn to the experts who do that kind of thing every day. Prices are set based on supply and demand. If the supply for some particular modification is high, and the demand low, then the prices will be low to reflect that, and vice versa.

If you don't want to spend a lot of money, then you have to settle for very minor or trivial alterations to the vehicle, because that's realistic and comfortable within your budget. Alternatively, you can learn how to modify cars yourself and bypass the entire boondoggle.

Deal with it; that's life.

It's vBulletin Tuner Culture Babe! (vBulletin.org is) lol We're just doing our best to pimp vbulletin up, not that vbulletin a solid product already! In our case, we've tried to balance free and paid addons. But the fact remains above that developers gotta eat and some of these engines, new tires and other take years to perfect. Some of what we've earned coding for clients and or script litterally been what he had for food money for a month. vBulletin.org is an asset for free pro addons, so we try to do the same back by releasing free pro addons here as well. I realize the hardwork and effort a lot of our pro community developers put into their scripts as well. Heck I have over 5 Owned Licences my self, and 14 client owned licenses I manage for vbulletin alone. This is definally the platform to build from and I have no problems paying for good scripts. Even for pro versions of stuff origional released free here if it can push the tech on one of my sites forward. Good programmers are hard to find, and it gives me more time to focus on design work, and other.

Hey man, I make the most out of free mods all the time, but I use paid mods a lot, whenever I can find one that does something I want that isn't available in a free mod. I can't complain; I'm just happy it works they way it should work. :D There are a lot of very talented coders working with vbulletin, and that's one of the main reasons I use the software instead of one of the alternative platforms. I'm no developer, but I do lots of code changes to personalize my forum, and I do a lot of the style edits (I even put together entirely custom designs from time to time), so I get a very good perspective on how much work goes into a lot of these addon products, and I have nothing but appreciation for the hard work involved. If I have to pay a bit extra for something, who am I to complain? I gotta eat, too.