I have to agree with, for example IggyP & cellarius.

Its funny how past mistakes on the end of the developers are just swapped aside and justified with "moving forward" comments.

I loved vB back then, between 3 & 4, when I came to vB the first time. It was great, it was active, its features were just awesome. I didnt leave vB after a couple years because I didnt like it anymore, but because I a restless sort of type and had to try other things as well.

Now that I came back, and didnt even thought that my license was still good, I thought ok, lets see if I can do have the same joy like back then. I mean, I heard over time about the lots and lots of security issues with vB, and at the time I was either trying other things or not doing any forums of my own and so I was glad I wasn't hit as bad as other people were in that time.

Removing possibilities for plugins & mods, and with that limiting it more and more, for a price of 200 $ thats not ok. If you couldn't get your security stuff solved, try harder (yeah, I know, sounds so easy and I am pretty sure it wasn't). But again, for the price that you ask for your product, thats not an excuse in my opinion.

I realize, that social media and the fact that people (most) have become lazy and dont even care to write much anymore outside of Facebook, Twitter and all these other platforms, made forums and systems like it take a gigantic step towards obselete, which is really sad. I guess the little that most people write these days, is filled to the max with 1 - 3 Facebook posts, and thats it.

Forums have it much harder now than back then. But that doesnt mean, in my opinion, to limit the Software's capabilities to be able to do all the great stuff they could do back then, when forums were much more popular. As it was said above, content, content, content .... but its not like you also limited the functionality in the prices. 200 $ for content, content, content, thats a big no.

I was working with Woltlab the last few years before I made a complete break with any website I was working on. And honestly, their stuff seems to work fine, and they're not even so expensive as vB. And they still rock the Mods & Plugins and stuff.

I thought about upgrading to vB5 when I found out that I still had my license, but not only I heard that vB5 was going into a bad direction, but also the little I do with it for the time being, would by no means justify upgrading with so much money into something that it appears, didnt really move forward, but backwards. I think vB has to think about that going back with less functionality, cant mean to still ask as much money for it as you do.

There was never a forum that had all so interesting features built-in from the start, plugins & mods were and still are (for me at least) very important. And you had great Mod development with vB3 & 4 here. So many people made stuff for vB, that was exceptional I think. And then those people were kicked in the face from the people they spent so much time & effort for, to help and make vB something great. And you really think that its unjustified to talk about it, as often as it happen ?

I still like vB (4), but its a big disappointment how the devs defend their actions in such a way, considering its their doing that it came to what it did. As so often, people like to hear good things about their accomplishments, but not the bad. Then they get cranky.

When I created this topic, I didnt think that it would get that much attention and posts. I would like to thank those of you that helped me understand, why this is happening. ;)

That argument is a non sequitur. It's like leaving your job with Dodge because you loved the old Charger but hate the new one. vB4 developers could have kept right on developing for vB4. The fact that many of them were unable to grasp the API in vB5 doesn't prevent coding for vB4. Many coders left without any explanation whatsoever. At least one left for health reasons. One passed away. One continues to update its vB4 products while refusing to work on its vB5 products. Some have become vB staff members and have far less time for developing and maintaining modifications. There are far more reasons why vB4 modifications are out of date than just "vB5 was garbage when it was released."

You see where "job" and "free addons" makes your anology kind of... weird? I can't remember ever being paid either by IB or by anyone that used my addons. You see how I get to choose to spend my spare time in an environment that I like?

And that's exactly where people will start rolling on the floor laughing. But you're welcome to a little spiteful remark now and then :)

Ah, you see, people don't have to explain themselves, and they don't have to do so here.
Of course there are more reasons. But that does not disprove that for some, and I say many, probably even most, product quality and company behaviour was the main reason. Nothing of what you list explains that "coincidental" mass exodus of coding talent in a rather short timeframe or the overall quietness of vb.org and vb.com if compared to earlier years. Exceptionally funny is your mentioning of coders who got employed by IB. That wouldn't be many of the core staff that got treated shabilly by IB right on this very site just a few weeks ago, and therefore stepped down? But of course, that was entirely their fault. :rolleyes:

Anyway, I'm out of here. Although it's kinda funny :D

A lot of the above was arguably relevant in 2012. vB5 isn't remotely the same today as it was then, and there is plenty of interest in upgrading.

Of course it is far from perfect, but as I said to Brandon, many people base their current views of vBulletin 5 as if 5.0.0 was the current version. It is nothing like that today.

I also did say this earlier, which seems to have been forgotten:

And that remains true. It's hard to learn and hard to modify. That is your number one reason, much as people like to claim other reasons.

--------------- Added [DATE]1507822556[/DATE] at [TIME]1507822556[/TIME] ---------------

Do you understand why the plugin system was considered a security risk?

It's got nothing to do with how vBulletin itself is coded.
It's because people can easily hook malicious code in there.
You can't "get your security stuff solved" when it isn't your code that's responsible.

Rightly or wrongly, that's the situation, and running around shouting "it's all nasty vBulletin's fault" in a long post where you've just demonstrated you that you fundamentally don't understand the system you're talking about, isn't really a good starting point.

--------------- Added [DATE]1507822777[/DATE] at [TIME]1507822777[/TIME] ---------------

You do understand that when you work for a large company as a developer, you code what you are told to code?

It doesn't matter whether you agree it's a good idea or not, you do as you are told, or you have no job.

I rather tire of seeing the very skilled and very hard working vB development team slated like every world problem is their fault.

You want to slate management decisions, of vBulletin or any company, go right ahead. Don't slate the staff who are doing what they told to do, just like with most jobs.

On a positive note, I've worked with clients who had vBulletin 5 when it came out and still use it today, there has been significant improvements and these clients are satisfied with how things work right now in the latest release. The first release was rather hectic but they have definitely improved it.

Why did Star Wars Episode II end? Because Episode III was released (well and because the credits rolled at the end lol). Sure the current vB4 lack of mods can be equated to vB5 coming along so we mentioned it. Why did Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze sales decline? When TMNT III: Turtles in Time came out... Semantics!

@Other statement about not understanding API: Understand the API? There was NO documentation on it back then, none and the plugin system didn't exist until recently.

Anything that comes after the previous affects the current then becomes the new norm for a while but truth be told Cellarius pretty much summed up much of my reply in his before I could even login today :p. Remember though folks that much of us agree on many things we're simply voicing our opinion i.e. I agree with you now that vB5 is perfectly fine (imho) so we can't agree to disagree if we're in the same book, just a different page until we catch up to each other.