Why not vBulletin 7 ?
 

Due to the fact that social networks have vastly grown, uses of forum board decreased so much, but forum still has its own place, where we can archive and discuss things with determined subject. I still like vbulletin style and its structure a lot, that's why I'm still stick with vb4. However in order to live, forum have to change. There are some of social-like-forum software recently but none is really useful.

Then there is vb5, I would say this is a failure, lacks of feature, lacks of customisation, full of bugs through out versions. It can be easily seen as below, (73 and 28) compares to (2700)

vB5 is still under development but it doesn't seem like an active product. So, why not vbulletin 7, you can take time to think about the changes. the concepts, like PHP 7, a really good thing recently.

I know the idea is delusional as their minds are now full of fixing bugs. But let these are just for expectations and for FUN.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2016/11/8.png

Why are you skipping 6?

Also, your assessment of vBulletin 5 is complete nonsense.

I don't have numbers of their sale of course. But look at the vb5 ecosystem, do you see thing? Do you want to use a forum full of bugs and have no more than 100 extensions? Are you willing to pay for all modifications you need? Also as I stated, it's just an expectation.

Why skipping 6? Just a funny example, php 7, windows 10 and so on.

Making a brand new version from scratch would take years, and would require users to buy new licenses. Not going to happen. Development is focused on vB5 for at least the foreseeable future.

As stated, the assessment of vB5 there is way out anyhow. I think some people used one of the 5.0.0 Alphas and decided they didn't like it, and assume the product is still like that. It isn't.

Not going to change the fact that it still has many bugs, you need to pay for what you need, even just a simple thing from vb4.

Lacks of extensions, third party login is absent, real time notification is nowhere.
This just proves that standard requirement is somehow low.

I don't think they even have the manpower to start all over again, even if they wanted to.

This reply is directed at the general point, not at you specifically.

Not to mention there's absolutely no reason to start over again. It's not as though the competition has advanced even to the level of vBulletin 4.2x as of yet.

There's only so far the development of a message board forum software can wander before it becomes something other than a message board forum.

I realize there are people who think it should become a social media platform but if it becomes that it is no longer a message board forum. It can't be everything to everyone.

It can't be Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram, and WordPress, and forum software. If it's all of those things guess how much time social media people will spend on the forums? About the same amount they spend now.

But it seems like that's what people want and expect.

A lot of people lost their bowels over the initial release of vB4. And yet, it has developed into the best software of its type.

vB5 is the only software of its type. It has no competition. So when some people go off the deep end about how vB5 is a bad product because it's not an upgraded version of vB4 they have no valid argument. vB5 was never supposed to be that and was never advertised as being that.

Kevin and the development team have made huge progress on vB5 in the last few months. In less time than it took for people to not only accept but actually like vB4 I believe they will have vB5 leading the industry. They did it with vB3 and with vB4, so there is a precedent.

Agreed, and it's also worth noting that vB now has a small but stable and long term development team, lef by Kevin. They've all been there ages, they now know the vB5 code inside out. Of coure, they cannot work miracles but things are chugging along very nicely, and some of the stuff coming up, if it comes to pass, will please a fair few people.

New features get launched now with very little issue...vB Messenger is the most recent example, well received, popular and I think only one real bug turned up post the initial release, which has now been fixed, and so there can be some focus on improving the functionality. There's now the basics of a page manager in site builder, something that's long been demanded. A major current focus is improving language support, as Arabic (in particular) sites have issues at the moment. In 5.2.5 they sorted out the image upload problems and it just now works. Etc etc.

Meanwhile the cloud platform continues to grow and is proving a popular way to 'test the water' with a forum before going self hosted (since you can port across). Conversely, some long established boards have decided to move to cloud for the low maintenance overhead. Cloud upgrades, which were a bit fraught in the early days, now go without a hitch.

I will add that while there aren't a huge quantity of mods on vBorg, that doesn't mean there aren't any to chose from. Most of the more complicated and sophisticated products built for vb5 are not free and are typically custom built for functionality requested by the person buying the mod.

And that's the way mod development is heading on all platforms now. You pay for anything half-decent. The vB3 and vB4 days of thousands of fully-featured, supported modifications being released for free will never return on any platform.

Glenn has some decent mods for vB5 on his site. Well worth looking at.