[Brad]

Originally Posted by GoTTi

also, IMO, vb.com is then acting like the 50 cent of gunit. eating all the cake. they put hacks and addons released here in their versions of vbulletin and EARN off that. the quick reply options and the enhanced modes, lots and lots of things we as hackers (even though i create junk hacks), but we create them and they implement them in use for their upgraded versions of the board. is that fair to the authors? do the creators get payment from releasing hacks that are now implemented inside vbulletins software? NO. why is that ok?

This logic is flawed.

Sure the features a hack adds may find its way into the source code, but it's not the same code.

You speak as if they come here and copy/paste code into the source.

There have been a few things 'donated' to the source code, overgrow's karma hack comes to mind. But keep in mind that it is not his code you see in the source code, one of the vBulletin developers sat down and wrote it.

Originally Posted by GoTTi

i dont agree with the rule that "commercial" addons created by anyone here shouldnt be allowed. thats just redicoulous. if we can put a paypal link in our threads requesting donations for it, whats the difference?

There is a big difference between having a donate button in a hack thread and linking to a commercial script or posting a copy of it that would be removed after it was bug tested.

We wouldn't allow photopost to come here and release a beta version only to pull it later on. If we made an exception for the 'little guy' we couldn't stop the people that really do intend on exploiting this place and its members.

The staff has been discussing this issue for some time but there are strong feelings on both sides and it's not something that we can just change over night. I encourage you guys to keep discussing this but please try to do it in a constructive manner.