Jelsoft hasn't lied. vBulletin is a trademark, it is not a registered trademark. In the United States and the United Kingdom, you do not have to register a trademark for it to be valid. You only have to use. A registered trademark on the other hand has more enforcement value behind it. Being from another country Floris might not know this and his statements are a case of not investigating further before posting.

Personally, I think all the names with vBulletin in them, including vbulletin-fans.xxx et al., are confusing to the customer and should be shut down. They produce commercial instability in the marketplace and diminish the value of the vBulletin brand. Until trademark registration has been followed through with though, it can be difficult to do so though. And yes, I do realize that I own a vBulletin domain for a particular project.

I believe a "vBulletin Certification" would be enough.

Checking software would amount to a lot of work and would imply that "vbulletin" has checked software for bugs, etc -- which may lead to a liability issue down the road. I don't think they will go this route.

It's better being safe than sorry. Plus, the resources could be used "in-house" to further enhance the company's products/services/etc.

hmm well from what you guys are now talking about is the domain name point of things....

floris has in his signature on vb.com 4 sites with the vb lingo,

vBulletin Fans "Language" Site @ http://www.vBulletin-Language.com/ [unofficial site]
vBulletin Fans "Fans" Site @ http://www.vBulletin-Fans.com/ [unofficial site]
vBulletin Fans "Tutorials" Site @ http://www.vBulletin-Tutorials.com/ [unofficial site]
vBulletin Fans "Style Demo" Site @ http://www.vBulletin-Style.com/ [unofficial site]

all have vbulletin names in them and all say unofficial. domaina can be owned by anyone. u cant trademark a internet domain name. thats how alot of companies that register domains stay in business, by buying up possible domain names. for instance, www.mikerowesoft.com. this was from a kid, who happend to have the name Mike Rowe, and decided to make that domain name, and m$ got fumed, tried to take it from him and lost. from what happend though, i think Mike got a lifetime membership to their programmer site and schooling and training to not market the name or some junk...i dunno. whatever it was, m$ was not able to get the site from him.

You can, at least in Germany.

Actually, there is legal justification and use of a trademark in a domain name is valid. Microsoft lost this case because:

1) It was the person's legal name. In the United States, legal surnames trump trademarks.

2) It was deemed dissimilar enough not to create commercial confusion. In order to enforce trademark violation, the entity whose trademark is being used incorrectly must prove that the use is causing them financial losses. Mikerowesoft.com was not causing documentable financial loss. If he had been peddling his own version of a Linux desktop called "Doors" (Open the Doorways to the imagination), then he would have lost.

To find proof of case #2, you only have to look at Lindows. A linux distribution purported to be as easy to use as Windows. Microsoft sued them for similarity of trademark and they were forced to change their name. Trademark is the entire basis of every anti-domain squatting law in the United States and Europe.

I know I dont have much a say in this but I would have to respectfully disagree, vbulletin-fans is a great place for people who love vBulletin like myself to chat about anything involved with vBulletin ( other than code modifications ) I am glad floris opened that and it is a great site and I would very much hate to see it get closed down by ANY reason, other than personal reasons made by floris. I understand it can sometimes confuse people but it is hard to confuse vbulletin-fans with vbulletin.com where to buy a license at :p.


~Curt
Once again I do this out of respect, just had to voice an opinion and I DONT want to get offtopic so this is the last thing Iwill say about it :).

okok so back to the main topic here then. enough with .com rules and mumbo jumbo.

we're tryin to establish here whether commercial hacks should be allowed. Wayne, thanks for takin time to input us from the vb staff side. can u ask the rest of the group to put their cents on this so we can all discuss the right situation here?

I don't think that is going to happen. This affects Jelsoft as a business directly, so it's going to be their decision/opinions that matter in the end, not ours.

so ultimately it would be in the best interest of jelsoft to do this in the same way as vbulletin.org, i.e. establish the userbase in an unofficial capacity to the point of being the unofficial-'official' resource and then applying for sisterhood/official status?

i actually agree, the url's suggest officiality. and allowing another company to thrive on your trademark in such a way just isn't good business sense lol.

saying that, i hate/detest the fact that vbulletin-germany.com is not vbulletin.dr (or whatever the german domain is). and that vbulletin-china.com isn't vbulletin.ch

What I'm waiting for is consistency and an assurance that any certification process would be free of favoritism. That is why the domain issue is on-point.
On the one hand: here are the rules.
And on the other hand: "we" are exempt from following them.

I mostly agree, it is not up to Jelsoft to setup a website for others to pay for modifications to their product. I believe a simple listing (along with a user rating system perhaps?) would suffice.

yeah but a rating/review system would prove nothing as we see with Amazon and many other shopping sites. the company/producer goes on and writes a good review for the software/book/whatever even though its completely bias.

Thats why I was suggesting that only somone that purcahses an item should be able to rate it. THat way you get away from squiffed results.

Sad thing is that I guess it would be too complicated to do (though I would argue that).

What would keep a company from 'buying' there own products, so they can leave a rating? It will not cost them anything, since they make the payment to themself.

A rating system IMO should be a small part, we should focus on a simple listing first. If you are worried about a rating thing (which can obviously be abused) leave it out. People can go look at the product themselves and decide for themself.

After having read all 7 pages of this thread....

Any type of "rating" or "comment" system would be a horrible, horrible, horrible idea. Just do a search for phrases like "portal suggestion" or "gallery suggestion", both here and at vb.com, and you can see what starts out innocently enough turns into a ugly mess. :eek: Not to mention that fact that it would introduce a factor of liability for Jelsoft if somebody was to leave false and/or libelous feedback about a product or service.

- Having a 3rd party directory of products & service providers is a good idea.

- Having either a Jelsoft certification process or a Jelsoft program that charges a fee (kind of like a "Jelsoft Partners Program") to prevent obvious spamming of links is a good idea.

- Having the directory on one of the existing vB.xxx sites is a good idea.

- Having any type of rating or comment system is a very bad idea. :paranoid:

Somebody mentioned a product like vBa Links would serve the job... I agree, as long as the rating and comments options were turned off. :ermm:

A simple listing of 3rd party services need not be so complicated! All that would be required is a simple disclaimer stating that Jelsoft is not affiliated and does not warranty products/services available on this list.

It's not rocket science!

Now, certification is a different thing ... with all sorts of implied warranty issues. Let's say XYZZ is certified by Jelsoft and produces a script that later is revealed to have security issues. If that script has caused anyone severe financial or other losses, it is not unreasonable to believe that Jelsoft could find itself in a legal quagmire based on it's certification (implied warranty) of XYZZ.

Why make a simple thing so all-fired complicated?

IN your example. Amazon clearly differentiates between Publisher/Editor/Critic comments and general public comments. In Amazon's case, they contact the publisher for a synopsis of the product when they post it. This sells products.

Customer reviews are listed separately and moderated.

yeah but we all know that some of those reviews are fake>_>

You're assuming too much. Just because Jelsoft "certifies" that a script (or service or anything else) goes by it's standards it doesn't assume the liability if anything goes wrong with it. It's just like Microsoft certified partners or any other companie's "Certified Partners" programs.... if the partner gets in trouble Microsoft (or whatever company) has nothing to do with it.

Personally I like the idea of either a certificiation process or at least a fee based partnership program (eg: like with Microsoft where if you become a certified partner you can display their logo, etc.) because it'll help to seperate the partners who are just trying to make a quick buck from a quickie hack versus the people who are running a business.

You may be totally correct. I'm sure that Jelsoft's lawyers will best advise them.

I am not gonna read the past comments as I just dont have time.

I was under the assumption that THIS site was not ran by Jelsoft. Jelsoft can not have the best of two worlds...Thats not how things work. If they want to dictate this site or be affiliated then they have to assume the liability thats involved with doing so. They are currently not accepting liability for any actions on this site nor do they support a board utilizing the hack(s) found here......

If Jelsoft wants to make the rules here of no listings of paid hacks then they need to assume liability for this site.

I am pretty sure that this site IS ran by Jelsoft.

Jelsoft does own and operate this site and no we do not have any legal obligation to support any code on this site. The site is maintained by volunteers.

The individual developers are responsible for supporting their work, if they choose to do so. Modifications to the vBulletin code are "at your own risk" as stated in the vBulletin License Agreement. The alternative is to not allow modifications to vBulletin at all. That is something we do not want to do.