[cellarius]

And here we go again. All this has nothing to do with xenForo at all. You're so fixed on that other software. People did not leave because they liked other software or didn't like developers fired in the first place. They left because vB4.0 was practically unusable at first release (and it stayed that way until up to 4.0.7 at the least), and became halfway good only with 4.2. And many of those staying with vB during the long stony track that vB4 was and prepared to give IB a second chance, were apalled when IB pulled the same stunt again with vB5 - selling customers a software for very good money that would clearly take years to be in state to be used productively.

You see, I have been using vB for years, was a fan, coded lots of addons, did alpha and beta testing, ddicating lots of my spare time to that. The problem was: I did it not only for free, but also for nothing. I (and I'm not alone in this) more and more got the feeling that we were being ignored, much like the support and even dev staff must still feel. Our opinnion on basic pruduct design questions was not valued, our feedback usually was in vain. What do you think with how many of such nifty design ideas we did come up for vB4, or, for that, for vB5? How many of the issues that IB now sells as vast improvements in minor releases were already pointed at in alpha/beta testing? The problem always was: Once the users (including alpha and beta testers) got a look at the product, practically everything was set in stone, including the release date (although no one ever admitted that). The state of the product did come into the matter, neither with vB4 nor with vB5. How else to explain the catastrophic state of vB4 and vB5 at release? A state, that was very well known to IB management, if they only once listened to our feedback?

You see, different from those working for IB, I (and many others) had the possibility of turning away in disgust at that. And given the employee fluctuaton in the last few years, even some of those getting their paycheck from IB did not really fancy working there, or develop any pride in the product. The lawsuit just added to that, but it's not the core of the grudge. As I said in the beginning: Had IB continued to deliver even halfway decent software, many of the old hands would not have turned their back. Really, you don't seem to understand half of the problem here, being all fixed on your own grudge with xF.