[Reeve of shinra]

Generally speaking, paid hacks aren't the problem. Some hacks are really complex and require alot of support and are worth the few extra bucks that people want to charge for it. Some aren't and chances are they wont recieve alot of purchases. It works itself out in the end for the most part and there will always be something similiar around vb.org for free for those are more inclined to using it.

But anyway...

I remember when vbulletin.org first opened up and releasing a hack was considered prestigious. No matter how big or small the modification might be (some were 2 line template edits!), it was your five minutes of glory and everyone appreciated the fact that someone took their time to contribute something back to the community.

Most of us were new to programing in general and questions were tolerated and encouraged and if people got a little snippy once in a while, its one of those things you just shrugged off - like your gf yelling at you when its her time of the month or the parking ticket you got for waking up five minutes late.

phpbb or ubb would release some mod or include some feature that vbulletin didn't have and being the proud types that we are - we rolled our own and tried to "one up" them in the process. It was competitive fun.

edit: that reminds me of another thing. Requests were more simplistic in the vb2 days. Karma was just an integer that was incremented or decreased by a button... today, people are expecting someone to replicate myspace for free. Thats an educational issue and we should do a better job of establishing expectations.

If you want to bring those golden days back, its pretty simple.

* Stop complaining. Some people love drama for the sake of drama but I for one hate it. It serves no purpose and only creates aggitation where are are striving for harmony.

* Make it easier to do business. In short thats the hack database with a wiki like function so users can contribute answers to FAQ's and the occassional code snippet to get something to work between upgrades.

* Keep it fun. No one gets paid to release thier work. Its released because someone needs it for thier own site or because they enjoy the challenge and wanted to create something. Who wants to contribute thier work when its people nagging all the time?

* Practice what we preach. We want to encourage people to post thier mods then we should give a helping hand where needed on thier projects. That doesn't mean coding it for them but encouraging them on how to go about a project, resources to check into, even perhaps books to buy.

I can go on but *yawn* it is getting late.