I think the number of installs a hack gets shows that the hack was worth something, worth something to the community and worth something to Jelsoft (as ultimately, hacks offer increased functionality to their software).

I think there are a good handful of coders here and I think they deserve something for their efforts, particularly from those that benefit the most... that is arguably Jelsoft (because they make money out vB - much more than anyone else, site owner,user,developer/coder, or otherwise).

Without the hacks from the community, Jelsoft would need to commission either a 3rd party or some members of their team to produce/develop the hacks just to keep up with the other forum platforms out there, and I can assure you that a community doing it for you is a whole lot cheaper than paying programmers wages!!

I'm not having a go at Jelsoft, on the contrary I am trying to HELP them strengthen their position as market leader. The hack community is very important to platforms like these and it would be in all our interests if we were encouraging the act. (And who better to do it than those that benefit finiancially from it?)

Not necessarily. See this for instance. It does have a lot of installs but it's very simple and also is posted by another person at vb.com for vb 3.0.x...

Hopefully there will be a safeguard in place for things like that?
Someone just has to sit down and write the rulebook :)

I personaly wouldn't include template mods. Theres a big diffrence in the amount of work put into php vs a template mod. ;)

Agreed ;)

Not always is the case though. loo kat H3RD Garden or w/e his name is. His profile thing may not be a difficult modification but he has provided tons of support for it and has helped integrate galleries and wha tnot.

I agree it's most unlikely, that's why I said it would be nice - one can but dream :)

The best way to support the coders here is to click and send them a donation using the donation buttons/links they place on their posts. I think that many overlook this, but even a small donation can often help - even if it goes towards their license renewal in the end :)

Vbulletin doesn't support hacks, so it would be somewhat illogical to give free liscences to hackers/modders.

Jelsoft did take this forum and transform it from a coder hangout into a customer resource site though. They changed the very nature of vb.org so that it is now a site where hundreds of people show up every day looking for things to enhance their forum.

Those hundreds don't want to code enhancements. They don't want to contribute their work. They just want to use what is here and request what isn't.

When that happened, a lot of the coder community went away. We lost our zeal to collaborate and share. It also tended to drive some coders to a more commercial stance. Some felt we were being marketted as part of the benefit of buying Jelsoft and wanted their share of the pie.

I still contribute stuff mostly because I haven't quite lost hope that either the old gang will drift back, or some new people will step up. But, it may take some sort of reward to get people really contributing major free additions anymore.

You have to understand that there is a lot more to releasing here than just posting code. The support requirments can be overwhelming. So, while I'm never going to say to Jelsoft "reward me or I'll stop sharing", I wouldn't tell them they were off the mark if they were to consider some sort of a reward to entice the serious coders back and to keep them here.

Amy