[Digital Jedi]

Business practices are like the wind. You never know which direction your favorite company is going to go. That's why I pay little attention to it. I look at the product. If they're not manufacturing their line with souls of orphan babies, I'm probably not going to care how unintellegent they are. It's not like they're going to pay much attention to me.

Where you can make some headway is on the user to developer level. You express your needs reasonably to the development staff (or their equivalent, depending on the company we're talking about) and you can sometimes take advantage of changing winds. Consider the fact that the changes with vBulletin, the one's you don't like, were sudden and unexpected. No reason it can't, and most likely will, change again.

Consider, too, that these types of discussions seem to want to place vBulletin and xenForo owners in two distinct categories, when they don't have to be. I happen to own licences for both. I like both. I use both. I am starting to develop for both. I don't care if the companies, or the fans, want to quibble. Because leaning one way or the other cheats me of the user experience gained from each.