Thats so dam true, I admit that I too had a pirated vBulletin once. I got to know its coding, started pissing about with RPG hack, took a look at all the features and BOOM I was in love :p
You can describe all of vB's features to me as thorough as any developer can, you know what it sounds like in my head?
"Blah blah blah? Nenene yada yada randomspam spamspam!"
I dont give a piss about how a feature looks in the manual, I want to see it in action!

AdminCP demo couldnt do much, could I edit the files and check out how the features would work in the environment my forums create?
No.
If it werent for pirated vB, I would never have bought it. That simple.

To be perfectly honest, checking for new versions is a task that is the user's responsibility. It's not up to the developer to force the issue, in my opinion.

Most applications won't tell you if there's a new version or not. And the ones that do usually give you a way to turn that feature off in that program's Preferences.


Really, that's all I'm asking for - a way to turn off the Call Home feature completely.


By all means, go ahead and put a version check in, if you think that it does more good than harm for your users. You can even program your app to enable it by default. Just give the users a way to shut the damned thing off. :)


Is that really such a horrible thing to ask? :)

That is good in principle. However, every developer eventually learns that the user is usually stupid. If users checked for updates themselves, then automatic Windows Update notifications would not exist.

So why can't users make the choice between ignorance and obersvance?

I wasn't opposed to a version check existing - my opposition was to not allowing users the option to turn it off (completely).

If you included that feature, and programmed your app to enable it by default - where would the harm be in allowing users the option to turn it off?


The way I see it, you would get the best of both worlds - yes?

Most users would make the wrong choice. "Call home? Well I want my privacy so that's going off!" In principle, users should be allowed to turn it off, but in implementation, users will unnecessarily turn it off.

Then that is a choice they should make, instead of having something forced upon the user?

I will say with utmost certainty that that is their choice to make. NOT yours.

If they make the wrong choice for the type of user they are, they will pay the price. But it is NOT the developer's place to take that choice away from them.

Everytime Microsoft tries to pull that same trick, people in every country say to them "How dare you?!?".

But when other developers do it, they think the same ethics don't apply to them.

The problem is that when users don't upgrade and are hacked due to an old security hole (see the whole calendar.php issue not so long ago), Jelsoft is going to spend a much bigger amount of time giving support to these users.

The only good option I can think about is having the setting in one of the debug settings (like the version number and so on).
That way, users will realy have to *do* something to turn it off, meaning they are fully aware of what they are doing.

How much simpler life would be for Microsoft Support if their software didn't have half the capability it did.

But the fact of the matter is that people want choices. Claiming greater support times is no excuse for depriving people of the right to plug the security hole of having an app send out information without their explicit consent.

Besides which, what great burden is it for vB staff to deal with a problem that is caused by an obsolete version? All they have to say (and they do say it) is "That problem was fixed in the 3.x.x release. In order to fix it, you'll need to upgrade to the latest version."

That hardly qualifies as a significant burden. :)


I could accept that. :)