I never claimed i didn't work for vBSEO Dean and it has nothing to do with the subject as the subject has nothing to do with vBSEO. So please try staying on the subject as Marco already warned that thread will be locked if the subject focus will be vBSEO.

--------------- Added [DATE]1223728830[/DATE] at [TIME]1223728830[/TIME] ---------------

What law are you talking about. If i wrote a script , every right of the script belongs to me. Noone expect me decides what i will do with it. I can encrypt it , throw it to thrash , give it to everyone free , or even ask 10000$ for a single license. It is the person who codes is the decision maker not Jelsoft or any other company.

Unfortunately i agree with Dean as it is clear that your age directly involves this discussion.

I meant use the DCMA notices and copyright law to get the hosts or providers of the people who've stolen your scripts to shut down their site, and maybe have them prosecuted in the process. Like how Jelsoft relies on people to report piracy via a form.

You obviously don't know how weak the DMCA is, or ever heard of offshore hosting in countries that could give a flip about US copyright laws...nevermind about having to hire an attorney to try and prosecute someone. All of your arguments are strawmen and weak. You've made no point about anything with your thread other than you're cheap and a whiner.

Seems to work well enough for Jelsoft and Invision.

Care to provide some stats to back that up? I happen to know Howard at Pirate Reports quite well and know from his experience and my own that 90% of pirated sites do not get shut down.

the guy who started this thread does have some argument and i agree with him.
The prices for any hack is really expensive these days and people need to get a reality check and stop asking for hundreds of pounds for a small hack.
TBH vbulletin is nothing like it used to be in yrs gone by.Members would help one another and if u asked for something - someone would knock something up for u and post it but these days its all changed - the only reply u will get is `how much are u willing to pay`
Everyone is sitting on the side line with paypal accounts at the ready waiting for the next `Requests for paid hacks` thread to appear.

Do you know how much hiring an attorney costs. Do you think a coder should spend that much money just to release unencoded scripts to please you. Also dealing with attorneys will also take your valuable time. Thats why that is the worse option for a small company or a coder.

Yes , vB.org was better old days and released modifications had much more quality and feature. However the community was not that big then and people didnt use to make a lot of money from their sites. Thats why vb.org used to be a place where people can learn coding etc.. Supporting addons were not that bad as community used to support all released products. But look now , it is grown a lot and it is nearly impossible to support free products. It takes too much time and effort. Unfortunately we all have personal life , family etc.. and thats the reason no one does it anymore.

I'm not sure where the connection is failing to be made.

You suggest that people should work for you at no charge to you. Then claim that they should also have no protection over their work. You insist that if a copyright violation were to occur, they can always go pay solicitors to fight the good fight like other software houses do (i.e. vB and IPB which oddly enough CHARGE YOU FOR THEIR SOFTWARE).

You know what? I like to read. But I am really sick of having to pay for books. Why cant authors just produce free books. On that note, all music, movies and petrol for my car should be free as well. Why? Because I am me!

The welfare mind set and its accompanying arguments are ignorant. People contribute on here for free all the time. The ratio of free mods to paid mods is most likely greater than 100:1. You are really complaining that the 99% isn't good enough for you? You must have it all? If that is the case, then any functionality that you do not want to pay for (i.e. vbSEO or any other commercial system you used as an example)... go make yourself instead of crying that others should do it for you at no cost to you (just time and money for them). Its really not any more complex than that. Quit expecting everyone to give you something without anything in return.

You have made your point, now may I? :)

1. Why the hell is everything for money now?
   We must make a living, you, me, everybody. It rarely will happen a multi-milionaire to be a programmer willing to make small and big additions for free. This always has been like this, and since I remember, only old software was given for free or as a trial. The idea of Open Source was wrongly taken as Freeware = software of free and completely unpaid use. While the latter may work for Multinationals like IBM, it is the definite death of smaller companies and single developers. Strangely Open Source was enforced by the large companies, right in the view to absorb (= kill and at best employ) the small developers. Please try to make a living of coding only, and you'll see what I'm talking about. ;)
2. Prices from Hell?
   The pricing depends on the quality and work which is put into a software product, and the number of sold copies and customers. While some developers make ridiculous offers, most sell under cost else they won't sell at all.
3. Lite does not equal feature non existant
   Many times, a light version is identical to the "extended" versions, but the way how customers and requests are handled are different. Paying customers have priority support, and can ask for features which may eventually never become published. Usually, paying customers are much more happy with a product than the free fellows, because they get also a service. Freeware is like an ambulance with no driver. Paid software has not only a driver, but also a doctor on board. Many customers prefer the latter.
4. Encryption? What the hell?
   Right. Encryption is a mod killer. but it is also the only ensurance the customer has not messed with the code and therefore there is no excuse for both sides. You can't imagine how often it happens to hear: "Oops, sorry, I have made a small change here ... does it matter?". Of course it does. I have wasted many days on searching for errors where they haven't been. But you're right, too, the code should be in clear text. What is missing to PHP is a "No Mess Lock", or an automatic warrant system, which tells a coder the source has been tampered with.
5. 'But for vBulletin and Invision there ARE NO alternatives.'
   Right. The point is, that at one side there are no free developers (top guns) available, and on the other that there is nobody willing to pay for an alternate product, even though they could make a lot of money directly by sale or on other behalf, for example advertising. And then it doesn't cost so much as somebody may believe, but no matter what, there is nobody willing to pay.
6. Custom Coding costs thousands of dollars/pounds...
   Yes, but thousands, not hundreds of thousands. It depends also if you want crap or quality. I want to recall that a top-gun developer rarely writes more than a few hundred lines of code daily, and sometimes sits on a single line for many days. But that code will still work when all other software has stopped. Two third of my customers have paid 3-8 times as much as if they had called a professional first.
7. Piracy forces encryption!
   No. Pirates have always existed and will be able to obtain the code if they really want. Good code will always be pirated, and there is no measure to avoid this, except for frequent updates. In fact this is the best existing anti-piracy strategy. If they had to update weekly, they quickly would give up - too much work for nothing ;)

--------------- Added [DATE]1223856333[/DATE] at [TIME]1223856333[/TIME] ---------------

Sorry, but I couldn't resist :D

We aren't ordinary fans - all posts I have read here are coming from professionals or at least upcoming coders and designers. We are the film-makers, and you are watching our movie and hate to pay for it :rolleyes:

Erm... I was comparing to the days gone by a bit and how it seems when something is free there are more volunteers rather than people demanding money for everything. Of course, I'm not sure what people think about the open source licenses that basically say any use of the code must also be free as with anything that integrates with the code, it basically says 'tough luck, no charging for anything related to this product'. Then again, I've seen quite a few sites with a really nice idea, anything submitted to them that gets abandoned by the author gets moved to a section where anyone who wants to can update/finish it in their own time. Basically, the audience gets to finish those things left unfinished by the original authors, which is pretty much the use of reuseable code.

By that, I mean REALLY light version. As in for your ambulance example, no driver, three wheels and no brakes. As in, I understand fully the whole idea of no support, just that in these cases there's no just no support, the product is so lacking it's basically:

1. Nearly completely unusable for the purpose of the modification. Lite enough to make even the basic 3.7 album system that's constantly been criticised for this look as feature rich as vBulletin itself.
2. It's basically a great big advertisement saying 'buy the paid product' on a free website that doesn't allow paid products. Think of it like those people who might post three lines from a paid article and then say underneath 'to read the rest of this article go to mysite.com and pay ?999.99'.

Seriously, these kinds of mods are really pushing the rules here to the limit in terms of near uselessness. At this rate, it'd wouldn't surprise me to see time limited 'Lite versions' now and people getting moderated for it.

I'd like some system like that, except just displays a great big message saying that it was 'altered by a user' when there's an error or something.

I'm not criticising the cost of custom coding. Just saying the pricing model isn't transferrable to off the shelf software.

Erm... I wasn't backing that piracy enforces encryption, I was attacking a common argument that would probably (and has) been given in this topic before it came up.

Sorry, but I couldn't resist :D

We aren't ordinary fans - all posts I have read here are coming from professionals or at least upcoming coders and designers. We are the film-makers, and you are watching our movie and hate to pay for it :rolleyes:[/quote]

The point still stands. You don't need 'expertise' to criticise anything. It's a very similar argument to saying 'only a scientist can criticise scientific knowledge' or what not. Saying 'I'd like to see you do better' and expecting that because someone cannot do better at whatever means they're wrong is a fallacy. You don't need to know how to make movies to say how a movie sucks, or know economics to say that there are unfair business decisions or various other stuff. Sometimes I really wish vBulletin would have a 'no use of code in paid deriative works' addition to their terms of service to stop much of this.