I can't really blame them for not doing so. Whenever anyone's tried this in the past, the disgusting abuse, insults and even threats they end up receiving beggars belief.

I don't doubt that in the least. It's certainly not productive to have such discussions. By the same token it's unproductive to have Wayne Luke and the rest of the IB Staff be a human firewall for the higher ups. There is such a thing as constructive criticism. How can any company supply software which meets customer demand if they don't know what customers demand? This is the mistake that's been repeated with this software. Some three letter acronym thought it would be a good idea to use the latest technology. Let's call him the Chief Technology Officer. He ran this by another three letter acronym. Let's call him the Chief Executive Officer. They discussed the development costs with a third three letter acronym. Let's call him the Chief Financial Officer. Then the concept was passed through the ultimate arbiter of three letter acronyms. Let's call him the EVP. The Executive Vice-President Of Things And Stuff.

The decisions were made by a bunch of Chiefs and no Indians. The Indians are the ones using the product. Obviously, the Chiefs are never going to like everything the Indians have to say. That's why there are still limits to the right to free speech. Because the Chiefs are not going to like what the Indians have to say. The kings are not going to like that the barons want rights. They still need to hear it. If you have no subjects you're an emperor with no crown, no kingdom, and no clothes.

No one is saying IB is obligated to agree with the wishes of its customer base at every turn. It can't agree with its customer base on anything when it doesn't even know or care what its users want in the product BEFORE they purchase it. Good software companies don't supply something not in demand and then leave it to their developers to fix it.

Good companies figure out for what there is a market by asking the market. We, the customers, are the market. It's not about venting or justice. It's good business.

"Common sense is not that common" - Steve Harvey

^ I love Steve Harvey, man is he funny and on point ;).

Needless to say a vast majority of the population are morons so if they don't realize Wayne is a human shield per say and look past that, we've lost all hope for humanity... well I already have long ago based on driving habits - point is not to only be amazed in this day and time by positive things not bs we all know nothing can be done about. Be well informed and place blame where it should be, give credit where it's due.

The notification of EOL is that final push we all needed, my first 1m+ post site was moved yesterday to a better platform and the others will be following soon.

In my opinion the EOL announcement didn't matter much, it was already pretty known that they've given up on development of vBulletin 3 and 4, especially after Paul M left.

Paul left permanently?

Yes.
He talked about it in this thread https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...=322893&page=2 and here https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...32#post2587632 about vBulletin 3/4 EOL.

hmm he said that i am making my own 3.8.12? is it offically? what does it mean?

He just means he will make his own version for his own personal use.

There will be no further official releases of either vB3 or vB4, and nobody is entitled to release their own full versions.

Two days ago, I bought VB5 Connect just to upgrade my VB 3.x/plugins to 3.8.11. To not lose all my work of several years, I will be interested by a version 3.8.12 in the future.

My forum is private hidden behind a htaccess (private a bit like Facebook), so I don't care very much about security and SEO. Only the portability in PHP of 3.8.11 is a concern for me.

I will test 5.3.4, it's in the package.