VB4 the longest running beta?
 

When VB4 came on the scene i felt that i should upgrade from my vb3.8 and stay with the times, but almost immediately on release there was a bug release so i thought i'd wait, it seemed that every month there was a new bug fix or security patch, i feel that vb4 is a beta and that they expect people to pay for the priviledge of testing the beta and reporting back the bugs and security problems, time and time again i've patted myself on the back for not moving to upgrade (and at quite a price too!), i've literally laughed every time i get notified of a new security risk or bug fix.

After all that above i was considering moving to vb4.2 as things had quietend down with vb4.1.x, i'd just spent some time organising my add-ons and edits so i knew what i'd have to replace or work on when i move, and now, blow me! another security hitch with vb4.2!

This doesn't bode well for vb5, if they cant get vb4 stable and secure after all this time i feel that vb5 will just start out where vb4 did.

What do you guys think? should i just stick with vb3.8 that i know so well and can model it however i need or take the plunge and keep up with the times?

Security patches are a fact of life for a product as complicated as vBulletin, you shouldn't be scared away because there have been 2 patches for VB 4.2.0.

In fact just the opposite is true- and in BOTH cases the patches were released before ANY forums were exploited by them. In either case they were in fact very minor patches for things that barely reached the level of needing a security patch. Some companies may have elected to not even put out a security patch and simply fixed them as bugs in the next version.

I am VB 3.x's biggest fan but 3.8.6 had an exploit that released your database username and password, about 100 times worse then anything in 4.x over the last 2 years. (Of course it was patched quickly as well, but it did make it into the wild.)

Staying away from 4.0.0 - 4.0.4 was probably a good idea because of the number of BUGS... But honestly since 4.0.8 in the forum only product I haven't seen a major bug that prevent the normal use of the software... Even in the CMS it's fairly stable- some people just hate it but all the big fixes in the world will never fix it- it is what it is.

I don't know what VB5 will bring but I do NOT feel recent releases are anything but a good sign VB is moving in the right direction.

I think you should check the facts out a little more carefully - the first security patch wasnt really a security issue as such, it was an obscure potential thread flooding issue, and has existed since the 3.x days (if not longer) - in other words, while it was recently patched (in 4.2, 4.1, 4.0 & 3.8) it has existed for many years. :)

For me it was the sheer number of bug fixes from minor release to minor release. Just go look at some of them, from minor point version to minor point version there is consistantly over 100 bug fixes for each release.

Thats the type of quality thats acceptable and can be expected.