So alpha testing starts or not?

yes disappointing. twice delayed. Expected in June now we'll see it in August/early September.
and its bad for business for vbullletin itself and others.

it should be out, we'll have to wait.it is private install you cannot see it unless you are in the selected team.

This really sucks...a lot of our rival boards are on IPB, and their new software blows VB away. And we have to keep waiting for something new and some type of improvements..but even these things listed don't make it sound very promising.

I know the post says your team is huge. And there are 327K members on this forum, and i'd assume the sales are around there as well, a lot of which are return sales..and I can do the math. It just doesn't seem like the money is being put to use anymore. I still like the software, but it really doesn't give me much more than the free ones out there anymore.

Just my opinion..I am still excited for the VB4 release, just seems like it's taking forever!

vBulletin 4 sounds exciting, but the thing that makes me worried is vBulletin pulling another price hike for licenses.I do hope they offer a free or reduced pricing for renewals so that we can get back into the swing of things.

If my lisense remain can i upgrade free

You should check the feature list of vb compared to others like IPB. The latter is still missing some key features that I couldn't miss and which vb has. And the free ones are missing tons of features.

VB is now in the hands of a big company and we can only hope they will improve it and release a good and stable update this year.

I honestly don't know why anyone is surprised by the delays. That's just what vB has become. I also hate the not public Alpha/Beta testing, I reported tons of bugs during the 3.5.X series and above and was denied Beta testing.

Oh well. Just a small fish in a giant pond I guess.

Yes, I agree, we should have public beta not private one, more live testers more better the software just like old days when they have live beta and beta release in a series, also release candidates, but as I understood, after the private beta they just release the final version. I dont think this is a good practice also maybe because they are too way behind schedule because they/people started talking about this vb4 since early this year, and it can only be out only this December/Jan 2010.

I doubt the closed Alpha/Beta will cause more issues with the final release. On the contrary, the quality of the testing might improve.

I don't understand why beta testing isn't open to everyone.