Let me tell 'ya...

I hope NOT seeing unwanted Ads in any vB page or product...

Plus, the paid services forum was created before the IB acquisition and not because of it. The vBorg resource community is a resource site for customers who wish to enhance vBulletin (and perhaps don't know how) and for people who wish to share ready-created solutions for them to make that easier. I don't see this change. This is a volunteer community. And those who wish to gain revenue from helping new customers by charging for help can offer these services on their own company web site, or use the services request forum and see if there's someone who could use a bit of help. I still prefer to share resources for free, or help for free where I can. I am not on vBulletin.org as a customer to make money. This is the wrong web site to make a living from.

I don't want to stray too far off-topic here, but Floris, I find your statement a bit hypocritical... you drive people to your vbulletin fans network where you have paid advertising banners... is this really that much different than the coders here whom choose to derive income through vbulletin-specific modifications?

Cheers,

~Regs.

He's not suggesting that you can't make money ... just don't expect vbulletin.org (Jelsoft) to give YOU money.

The best way to promote your business, products, and / or services is to promote yourself.

There are many people here who are making a living by being active on vbulletin.org. How much you earn is all up to you.

• If you are always negative ..
• If you are always ... gimme gimme gimme..

That's exactly how people will perceive you and your business.

My point is - You can make money. It's all up to you.

There is all this mention of them having most of their websites run with vBulletin
, if this is the case i really can't see this being a bad problem.

Looking through some of their sites they are pretty big forums that have been going on for a long time, so more than likely they have a vast amount of experience with vBulletin from its early stages so they know the system as well as most of you claim to do.

So it's not really some stranger company coming in hearing that vBulletin is the leader with Bulletin Boards. And trying to force their ideas upon vBulletin not really knowing what vBulletin is about.

It is a company with a vast amount of experience in this field. So at the end of the day when vBulletin was going to be bought out (was pretty inevitable really) then this must have been one of the best companies you could have asked for to buy out vBulletin. Like i say they must have a vast amount of experience with vBulletin since most of their sites use it instead of IPB.

What i'm trying to say really is this is better than some money grabbing company coming in with no idea of what vBulletin is, how it works and what it is used for. This is a company who must have masses of experience with the product looking at the age of some of their sites with vBulletin on.

This is one of the best comments so far in this thread. (Understanding that the original comment is around making money off vBulletin or remuneration for work contributed, so I'm the one who's off-topic.)

It's certainly positive that someone who actually understands the product is buying it; if this were, for example, a leveraged buyout firm (e.g., "money grubbing company") then it would be about squeezing the cash out of the carcass of vB until it's worthless. But I have to suspect vB wasn't attractive to such entities because they typically look for "synergies" (read: job cuts) for most of the profits, and clearly Jelsoft doesn't have dozens of redundant people to jettison.

My concern -- ok call it a sinking feeling -- is that what Jelsoft really needs is a professional development discipline to get it from "cool php hack" to "competitive commercial offering," and I was holding out hope that some real software shop would snag them for the brand recognition and market-leading installed base.

If I'm Internet Brands, I have two real options. The first is to pump a lot of investment into vB and add value, thereby creating more revenue from new/upgrading customers, per my hope above. (Note that pricing isn't a big concern, as I don't think vB has a lot of additional room here based on the existence of competitors including the free phbBB project.) The second option is for IB to optimize vBulletin for their own needs and not bother with the other customers... who will be asking for enhancements that don't benefit IB in any meaningful way. Logically this would be masked by statements to the contrary so that revenue would diminish slower, but eventually it would be clear to everyone.

And since IB is a WEB SITE AGGREGATOR, not a software developer.... well golly I don't think it's paranoia to worry that option 2 is in the cards.

Note that I'm not blaming IB or vB for doing this as each benefits. Jelsoft executes the classic software exit strategy, while IB gets complete control over one of its core software programs -- presumably at a very good price and leveraging future vB earnings. Me, I'm just doing the old chess thing and looking a move or two ahead. That's not "Chicken Little," that's just paying attention.

Dutch

Thank you =)

My ONLY concern is that since IB have 100's if vBulletin license's according to Wayne that they totally take vBulletin off the market giving them a massive edge over all competition by maing vBulletin only available to them, making existing customer's remove vBulletin from their sites.

I doubt this will happen but everything is a possibility at this early stage.

I understand what you are saying Princeton, however Floris prefaced what I quoted with talk about promoting on their own site and that this site is pretty much only about giving freely.

I suppose it is all about interpretation, maybe it is a language barrier - I don't know. I was just commenting on how I interpretted the post.

Cheers,

~Regs.

you are actually fully greatly right.. ;)

the first statement of this thread of mine was not directly to say i wanted to be paid from IB for my implication here... i actually don't care...

if someone think i posted this because i wanted to be paid, you really have a problem of language and interpretation... sorry if my level of language is too high for you then.

the goal of my discussion was brought some times in some posts, and it is regarding the actual situation of vb.ORG...

do you know a lot of real commercial companies like this IB who keep a fan-devoted website for support ?!... name some: Microsoft, Kodak, Toyota, Esso, Michelin .... how many of them have supported fan-sites where people get support for the original service ?!... none... for one reason: they want the service and support to be located in a single place, managed by their own professionals, dealing with their own internal protocols...

so if IB continue in their own path as a real project agregator, they will not keep an eye on the volunteered guys here, so one way or the other, the support here will change, and our role as coders will change...

the best thing would be that everything released as a good product comes to be bought by the company, so they can continue to support it, or they can even hire the coders with good potential... because i think this is their goal after all... financing the evolution of vB means also to have the best coders around, not only the original team...

He is actually right about my comment or his comment? :D