Don't read everything it's too much, but my opinion if the price is in a right proportion to the hack it is ok for me. It makes me only angry if the price is more than vb itself.
On the other side, if everything needed to be for free, products as the vbadvanced gallery or links directory would be not existing.
And it's right, if they use this forum to promote the products, they should spend some bucks for it.

Looks to me that many of the commercially-minded coders have solved their own issues by setting up another website where they can go into full-on promotion mode together. That's a nice solution -- let the lucrative market for paid hacks/etc. sustain itself. There's plenty of "business" as a vB-spinoff to be shared and plenty of truly talented hackers to produce vB-related products and services for those who are willing to pay $$$.

Now, this frees up the vb.org site from having to keep trying to resolve these little squabbles. Maybe we can do away with the friction that results from different subgroups pulling us off in different directions.

Those who wish volunteer their time and share their expertise with less experienced vB board owners can focus better on doing just that.... as it should be.

Thats not the problem we're trying to address. The issue is how to get the information to the VB user base. I don't want to have to search the internet to find a shopping cart add-on for VB, or a download manager or whatever I'm looking for.

If I stumble onto the site, I still have no idea how reputable the coder is and how good the support is. If it sucks, do you really think he/she is going to let that information remain public?

We're talking about a directory of VB add-ons with some type of feedback/rating system independent of the coders.

That's a problem that ALSO solves itself. If you guys set up a centralized website for promoting commercial hacks or shared links to other vB-related commercial sites that's reasonably well managed ... then it's good reputation and satified customer base will make it a successful venture. All you have to do is produce the same high quality hacks you've been doing all along and give your customers the support they need.

It's not that hard to promote it yourself... a good percentage of your fellow commercial coders will also be some of your best customers.

vB itself is sold thousands of times, so costs are spread among many customers. Custom scripts are only sold once or a few times. The costs of developing (some hacks might take weeks/months to develop) can only be spread over a few sales. So it is not surprise that they can cost more then vB itself.

MarcoH64 wrote ... (some hacks might take weeks/months to develop)

How typical is this for hacks provided here? ... taking out of the equation, coders who take their time, (because that's the deal with freebies), and those who just don't have time to tackle it?

Most mods I'm interested in are essentially to improve specific functionalities of vB.
I am using or looking at other more extensive software which integrates or functions alongside vb in specific ways, but I would consider these somewhat different to applications that are only modeled to work with vB.

~ Mark

You would be surprised how much time has been spend on some hacks. And i am not only talking about the obvious ones like the big portals.

If someone has a specific wish for a hack or can make money out of this hack, i think it is more then reasonable that some money is asked. If it is somehting that is widely asked by the whole community and can not be used to make money, i often just create it for free, otherwise they will have to pay (sometimes just a symbolic amount).

Even with hacks that are sold for higher prices (let's say more then the costs of vB), if you would calculate the hourly income from it (counting coding, giving support, etc..) it would be a price that most people would not accept for a normal job.

Thanks for the insight! I can see that a lot of time and effort goes into testing and support.
I'll do my bit and offer a donation for each working free mod I install.

Maybe if more people would donate, there wouldn't be as much payed hacks as there are now. 1 single payed (small, cheap) hack will give me more income then 10 free (donation ware) hacks that have been released more then a year. As a coder you can be happy if you get a single ($5-20) donation on a hack. Not something to complain about, as a coder you have choosen to release it for free, but just to give an indication.

In vb2 there was a very good gallery free, there was stores, arcades, top lists and on and on and on.... All big huge hacks free with in the community.

But I believe if this goes thru and they can promote their business on org I will personally seek another place. .org was based on sharing, helping, community a place to share hacks (not sell them). Putting this in place (at least in my view) will destroy everything .org is meant to be.

Those who make the hacks that are pay did those for the money, if they was for the interest in the community or anything then it would be free and something they made regardless for their own site.

That is how it used to be, people made something for their site and where nice enough to share the code they had altered, but as everything in life greed and money rule.