wow

this

wow

I'm glad to see this idea's closer to happening.

As a vb user for 2 years now, it's taken me quite a while to get to grips with the processes that go on at vb.org, complex hack installs and the fuzzy mysterious world that is commercial additions.

Having realised that a good webmaster's bills do no end at the cost of a vb licence, domain and hosting, and often dismayed that there is little incentive for coders to make large additions to vb for free, I'm glad this opportunity has opened.

Most importantly however, fee or not, I don't want this directory full of:

* Crap, be they near identical versions of free hacks
* Overpriced encrypted things that already advertise everywhere (you know who I mean)
* Third party scripts with minimal vbulletin support
* Loads of hacks aimed at profit making websites. Sorry guys, but a million and one ways to make money on my website is not what I need. Forums are what you spend money on, not what makes you money.

I would like to see a 'pre list' of what sort of directory is being considered.

I dont believe this will be a good idea for vBulletin License Owners. This is why.

I paid for a product and costed me money. By paying that fee I was granted the right to access this board and the one at vbulletin.com and download add-ons and mods/hacks/plugins/skins etc etc, made by members for other members.

Of course, I also bought some other paid hacks for vBulletin.

I can only think that when the "Addons Directory" will be present (lets hope not), all the free hacks and some of them very necesary for big boards (and which Jelsoft dont incorporate very fast into future software versions) wont be free anymore.

Someone said "Good businessman wont ask for money for his hack", but... a business man only wants to profit! So, if you provide an addons directory a lot of Free hacks will become Paid Hacks. With this in mind, I would rather choose PHPBB and spend 1 month adding all the necesary addons to make it look and adminstrate it like vBulletin, and not pay 4.000$ for the vBulletin license + 50 other hack fees.

What I say is, a commercial services database is GOOD, because we can contact coders and designers, but an addons directory I cant find a good reason for it to be there.

vBulletin is not free software-in fact it costs a reasonable amount of money. But we all paid for it. I've paid for at least two hacks for my forum and would rather vb.org was my search engine instead of google. I do think that hacks that charge should be kept in separate forums (perhaps a 'commercial' section under the major sections like 3.5 3.0 and so on) for easy searching.

I've seen comments in this thread regarding this crushing free hacks-I disagree. If I made a hack I'd still give it away. Some people charge for some of their hacks and give the others away-and this MIGHT eat into that, but I sincerely hope not. If someone puts the effort into something worth buying then people will buy and guess what-there will be more hacks to choose from if the people who want to get a little coin for their hard work have an incentive like a big marketplace. Sure, you might need to paypal 20 bucks or 100 bucks or whatever depending on the hack-but that is in the face of it not existing and you have to write it yourself-which is usually more expensive in terms of your time than buying the software. vB isn't cheap-but it was way cheaper than my alternative: writing my own.

I'd charge a commercial addon post a certain amount of money to make the post and then be done with it. We are smart enough to make up our own minds about whether something is worth paying for. If it is a copy of something that is free then the hack won't sell-people will get the free version. If it adds value over the free hack, however, the people will vote with their wallet...err paypal accounts and the hack will be successful.

I am FOR the proposal of allowing commercial hacks-so long as they are kept in a separate bucket.

Darax The Good.

Hitchhikernet.com, capitalist.

I do not like the idea. Don't we spend enough for vB in the first place?

I buy commercial add-on's, and it does not bother me, but commercial should stay seperate from the free.

I can see this NOT working.

Edit: Since I have joined, I noticed some commercial authors have been up in arms about not being able to peddle wares, but I see it this way. You want to sell it, promote it yourself, and leave the rest of us alone. If we want your product, we will find you.

I'm in two minds on this. On the one hand, I can see how it would be a good thing having all the paid mods in one directory instead of having to either search through signatures of hackers on vB.org or search on google. On the other hand, as has been stated over and over, I do also believe it will start the demise of free hacks/add ons, etc.

I've purchased a few specialised hacks for my forums over the years, but if all the smaller hacks started to become paid-for only versions, I'd have to start thinking twice about using vBulletin as my forum software of choice as, having six kids to think about, I don't have the money needed - or the coding know-how - to either pay to have the hacks I need or to code them myself.

So, I think I'm going to vote no on this one.

I hope this is stated clear enough.
I think I pay enough for the vB forum software if and when you choose (as I am sure this will be started) to start this process it will be a sad day for many that do this for fun and giving all they can to purchase vB and it's upgrades yearly. As any company is always looking to make a profit (nothing wrong with making a profit mind you) it just seems as will life, the things you used to take for granite and enjoy either become something you have to pay for to enjoy or it eventually dies due to others producing a spawn of offshoots to make user pay for the product. Most recently, Invision and as far back a Free Dial Up internet, etc.
I hope this does not happen but I doubt we really have a say to prevent something like this from happening nor should a few people stop the advancement of a desire to make a profit and expand the horizons, we are a free country built on democracy and all peoples have the right to better themselves.

Personally, I will not be purchasing any mods unless VERY affordable and most likely move to a FREE forum where modifications for the forum are still free.

I had my say for what little it costs now to say it.

My Cry-Baby response

Reality Check

Look, I don't mean to be offensive or reply with an attitude but:

• Some of us are in College, others have families to support, and others have apartments to pay for. (who knew us Admins had lives?)
• We have bills to pay
• we have our own lives with plenty of people taking nibbles out of our paycheck.
• Site Admins are NOT rich people
• We already coughed up $160 for vBulletin, and $30 a year for upgrades
• phpbb has a titanic library of mods and hacks all for free, with members and the community all offering support and maintenance
• Look at Coppermine image gallery, FireFox, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Xoops, Mambo, these people create and maintain some seriously complex scripts and you want to charge money for a stupid HACK? While message board systems like phpbb offer hundreds if not thousands of the same hacks for FREE.
• it seems today that anyone even slightly capable of creating any sort of script wants money for it. AND you want to give them a place, that supports their *greed? (greed is explained below)
• Why? Why, Is everyone so obsessed now-a-days with charging money for things that should be free, and are already offered for free in other places?

*Explination of Greed

*If it's not greed then what is it? Extentions and Hacks for FireFox and Thunderbird & God only knows how many more Programs are all free. With people happily contributing to them without getting any sort of payment. The creators for these scripts & extentions, mods & plug-ins are all proud contributors and as far as I know, I have yet to see anyone ask for money. Donations, yes. But no-where have I seen people ask for payment.

If these free communities can survive then what's the purpose of constantly finding more and more ways to charge people for things that should obviously be free.

Side-Effects

I understand that the creator of ______ Mod or hack has the right to ask for money to suppor thier art, but by you giving them a place to do this, you are incouraging them, and by doing that, it's only a matter of time, before every average hack writer starts charging $$$ for their mod.

What this reminds me of

This is a perfect example of the old days, before OpenSource became popular. Any idiot that knew how to create a "hello world" program, would charge $20 for it. The net, and mostly Download.com (cnet) was filled with some of the most STUPID and simple programs that were all $20. For some reason this price has not changed, a simple icon editing program costs the same as a simple backup program while there are free ones, better ones, with more features out there. Ironic? or Sad?

Giving Yourself AND vBulletin a BAD image

Anyone who takes a look at vB.com ends up here to check out how good the community is. What kind of an image will you be giving them? You might think that by showing off your "commercial services directory" a.k.a. money pillaging service, a proffesional one. But the truth is this, When they see you're charging Green for hacks and mods that phpbb and dozens of others offer for free... Not only are you turning people off to your community, you're giving vBulletin in general a Greedy image. How well will you sleep when you realize it's your service that makes vBulletin look like a dangerous investment? vB.org is probably the most popular and one of the few sites that offers mods and hacks and support for such things. You represent all of us, don't forget that.

Personally, It seems vBulletin is getting to be a very very expensive investment, and I'm begining to slightly regret giving so money for a script that cannot call it'self the most customizable, neither the most stable and secure. A LOT of money, TOO much money, is flying out of my pocket, and I swear right here right now:

I REFUSE to support any commercial hacks that this site offers for purchase, I'll find them somewhere else, I'd rather blackmail one of my script monkey buddies and pay them a few paypal dollars to write me one instead, but supporting this idea is something I refuse.

People need to stop asking for so much. And while it may seem like I'm the one asking for too much. Lets not forget, I'm not the one trying to charge money for services offered elsewhere for free.

I think I would support commercial hacks provided there was some sort of comment structure so that members could comment on commercial hacks. Also there would need to be clear divisions so that commercial hacks can be separated from free hacks. For example is a hack which asks for payment to get support a commercial hack or not. And is a hack which is free but offers paid add-ons commercial or not?

Well, I also have a little something for peepz around here to think about:

Governments will love you all to earn a little something extra that they can raise taxes upon. Now you all will be saying they never will find out, but if Jellsoft and all related boards seem to like to apply legislation, they should know that in that case they might face legal actions if they don't give out the list of members that earn money + the amount.

Unless of course all our more then happy to earn a bit extra coders are so eager to declare their little profits to the local administrations so they can be taxed over them.

Sorry about my crappy English, and lol no I'm not the one who wants to spoil someones dreams about quickly making some extra money.

But be sure you know what you ask for, before it hits you.

PS: I like opensource communities.

I agree with the proposal and I think it is a good idea to get paid for hacks. It might motivate some people to write more :) I also don't think that allowing that will adversely affect free hacks, just look at the strength of OS software these days...

The other thing is people already have links in their sig to their businesses, script providers, style makers etc. If this proposal doesn't go through, will the rules change and no commercial links be allowed at all?

:)

As a few pointed out the dot org being non commercial, I'm against this proposal. If there's a need to do such a thing, use a completely different site, not vb.org.

/me votes no.

I do not want to see this here, unless vbulletin.org is charging advertising space for such scripts? It will make it so pathetic if scripts all become copyrighted and people will try to make version of it, then you will see Photopost vs vbAdance type lawsuit all over the place. The only people that will be out in the cold is the member's.

*edit

What happens to paid hacks that has the author skips and runs off with your money? Lets say it was a very popular hack and someone tries to make a replacement, but ask they have no rights to create such a hack cause it is to simular? That will suck if all the good hacks end up that way. :ermm:

I am not against this, there are some add-ons that I would pay for.

However

To allow listings from those offering commercial services, I would suggest the following

The directory should be under vbulletin.com, not .org

There should be also a vetting process by vB BEFORE they can place the ad.
The advertisers should have to meet minimum criterea for development, AND support before being acceptable.

The advertisers should have to meet minimum criterea for proven history of mods and support, perhaps even require a minimum number of customer testimonials before being placed.

The advertisers should have to meet minimum criterea for proven compatibility for integration by vb.
vb should charge for this "pre-compliance" service and in return advertisers, third party developers would be advised in advance of code structure changes to be more compliant. (in the long run this will reduce support requirements)
There should be an additional recognition for third party developers who work with vb instead of independantly which can be an indication to prospective customers on the third party providers commitment to providing a better quality of service & support.
They should receive an advertising discount applied for them.

The service & support supplied by vb and vb.org authors is fantastic, but it won't be the first time I have seen great ideas commercialised under a parent umbrella and it back fires as the third party support cannot fill the shoes of the parents when it comes to customer expectations.

Alternatively just have a qualified listing or directory, no fees for ads, users who download and get a benefit from the mods can pay a donation directly to the author if they want support.

Just a few ideas, but i do agree 100% that this should be thought out, planned and executed with no haste at all.

What about paying for installing hacks? There's a certain hack I can't get to work cause its simply over my head right now being a newbie to all of this. I mean the hack is free for anyone to use and install but for people like me who have just spent litterally 10 hours reading and tweaking and playing with a hack and still can't get it......this is where I would pay someone to install it for me. Its still a free hack, the author doesn't step on anyone's toe's by charging everyone for it, only those who are willing to pay for it to be installed? Not everyone who buys vbulletin is a coder or has the understanding to apply a hack or for that matter the time to make this a hobby.

Just my 2 cents

When will a decision be made about this?

I agree with the proposal. I think it is a good idea to have one site for all hacks pertaining to vBulletin. If this place is not going to offer customers all the hacks possible for vBulletin I think it is pretty useless to me. So much for being the one spot to come to for all your vbulletin hack needs. Some of the best hacks out there are paid and you will not find them here sadly.

My 0.02 on the topic, as a coder and an admin:
The idea itself sounds great, and I'm all for it. vb.org is the place to go to get hacks, we all know this. Why not allow individuals to link here for a nominal fee to advertise their products. It's an excellent idea, and I'm all for it.

Try to understand something here:
vb.org is doing a service to these providers by allowing them to make money off of their site, and product. This is certainly not going to be a free event, and it shouldn't be, by any means.
When you go into business, certain amounts of funds must be set aside for advertising. You must advertise if you want to stay alive, in any business, no matter what. A central location like vb.org would be the ideal place to advertise, and yes, it should be charged for. This only enhances the quality of the product as it were.

There is no evidence to support this, only a fear of this. Most (note: most) of the hacks that are in the db already aren't even worthy of being charged for, so we're probably not going to go down that road any time soon.

The list would have to be something rather heavily moderated to ensure that these products (hacks/etc) aren't exact copies, or even duplicates in some sense of the word of something that someone has already offered for free. Action would need to be taken if someone reported that the hack was indeed something that had already been released, or a copy of someone else's code.

As to "Why pay, didn't we pay already?":
I , for one am all for this mod, and I've paid a yearly rate for a few years now. Why? Because, to me, at the time, it was what I could do. $160 is not pennies to someone running a small business.

Yes, we paid for VBulletin, but what you have to understand is that you're not purchasing VBulletin. Instead, you are purchasing commercial services and hacks to VBulletin, stuff that's not a part of the default package, and shouldn't really be. The VB developers have enough on their plates without working on stuff like this, honestly.

The hacks that will be displayed will need to be something of professional quality hacks, and the developers should, indeed, be paid for their work. I'm not saying that they should demand another $160 like some do, unless it is warranted (and I've yet to see one that is), but I am saying that their work should be paid for somehow. This gives them an excellent opportunity to place an advertisement (again, that's just what it is) in a comunal place, and will probably pick up a good bit of business from it, providing (of course) that their product is worth what they're charging for it (and in that case, I HAVE seen a few that are).

As a developer, if my vb skills were that great, I'd be all over this, as an opportunity, which it is. This is something that will, indeed require a good deal of moderation though.

I can fully understand someone wanting to get paid for their work, especially in the case of complex hacks. I am still against a directory of commercial hacks here. I am old school and when I first came onto the web in the early 90's, there were all kinds of free services and people were willing to help one another. Now these days, everybody and their dog is out to make a buck and you have to constantly build castles around your mailbox just to hold back the flood of spam. The same pattern is here, but without the spam. The activity level as far as hack development has slowed down, this site is not as helpful as it used to be and truth be told, I rarely ever find myself here. It used to be you could ask a question and you would have people jumping all over one another to get you an answer. You just don't see that anymore.

I know life is getting harder and finding new ways of earning money is sometimes a must, but just as it is hard for the hack developers, it is also getting hard for the prospective customers as well. Many people here do not run sites to make a profit, their goal is to provide the best community possible within their budget.

I find myself looking in the direction of PHPbb more and more these days as it seems the hack community at Vbulletin.org has been changing for the worst over the past two years. I struggle to find hacks with Vbulletin to allow me to accomplish what I want with my site (especially a good blog with the board). I have this problem even finding a paid script or hack to do some things I would like. I look at PHPbb hacks and I see ithese things (good blogs and etc) and they are almost always FREE!!!!!

I will quit rambling now. I hope that you can see where I am coming from here. The saying of, "Can't squeeze blood from a turnip" is coming to mind here. It just seems that a Vbulletin board these days is becoming a money pit when even a little increase in functionality can result in a $100 investment as well as another annual fee for access to updates.

Thanks for all the replies. I will go over them and further discuss this with staff to see how to proceed.