[cheat-master30]

Originally Posted by Black Tiger

I don't think you can talk about competitors in this case, because their prices and probably also their company goals are in a complete other league then vBulletin.
Probably most of us did not even hear of those other company's. Obviously with idiot prices as a couple of thousand dollars. They get maybe only big company users with that, if any.
You can't compare that with vBulletin, which is more in the league of UBB threads, IB and the free ones.

I don't see how these higher priced pieces of forum software aren't in the same league of vBulletin. Okay, maybe they're in a worst league than vBulletin, but still. Remember though that there's still a lot of examples of forum software in the $200 to $500 range, which is only slightly more than vBulletin and in the same market. phpBB, SMF and MyBB are probably not really that comparable, at least in that one or more of them seems to be very much 'we'll add exactly what we want rather than what users want'. IPB, that's in about the same league as vBulletin though, but to be fair, vB doesn't have to match or beat their prices to be popular.

Obviously because there was no need, they obeyed their license agreements and nothing much (policy and pricing related) changed until IB stepped in. But they did communicate in time about things that did matter. Or in any case react to rumours, to take worries away buy customers which they don't do now.

I don't recall them reacting to rumours much in the past. That might also be because some of the development team left, the support team who's still there can't really comment much on things they themselves probably don't know much about.

And it might al be voluntary leaving (sorry to hear about Floris health), but they don't leave al voluntary for nothing all of a sudden and all together.
Where's smoke there's fire somewhere is a well known Dutch saying. They must dislike a lot of things also but are probably bound to "don't communicate about the company" contracts.

Possibly, but I'd say not to panic, wait for vBulletin 4, try it, and if you don't like it then, it's a good time to switch to whatever competitor, ala IPB 3.

I'm a fan of vBulletin, but now I'm worried at least. And already stated arguments about what was going on the last years, the pricing and the leaving of key members, closing the announcement discussion forum (making customers mouthdead) and the lack of communication doens't do any good.

We again have to hope that things will come out ok and this will be the last of the big changes. Instead of there is decent communication, because you know as good as I do that they exactly know what will be the case, what wil happen, what versions and which costs.

To be fair, the announcement forum closing went with the Licensed Customers forum opening, which is basically the same as announcements discussion but more so. Well at least more so of the complaining, fights and hysteria that would have gone in announcements discussion.

Note: I'll be very honest, I'm hardly ever bothered by this kind of stuff because many, MANY companies I buy products from or generally respect have about the same policy of 'when it's ready' as Jelsoft, and respond about as much to people asking about rumours.