[Mark.B]

Reality is, the vast majority of customers are not interested in modifications. That's always been the case going right back to vB2.

If the company sarted offering free licenses for 'modification authors', how do you police that? Someone says they want one in order to write a modification - how do you make sure they do? And what classes as a 'modification'? Yesterday I wrote a small piece of code to push the vB5 PM chat icon below the username, instead of being on the same line. Is that a modification? Can I have a free license?

You would end up never selling any licenses because every user would become a 'modification author'. And you'd need a team of people to administer and police it - who would pay their wages?

It's all a moot point anyway. There's a reason no software company does this - it isn't remotely viable. And vBulletin won't be doing it, ever.