i doubt that a paid directory would give the best platform for advertising commercial/paid services... anyway, profit would be for who ?!

if Jelsoft is interested to have its products delivered to more people (the main goal of all companies), they have to show that their software is expandable beyond the point of their own script.

i'm not interested by the coders that build tools... again, i talk about real commercial systems/integrations etc... a complete banners system, a toplist script, a bingo, whatever... is not a line of code modified inside the forum itself, but a complete independant part... if these softwares can be added to vB itself, why not announce it?!

and for the comparaison with phpBB - useless... most addons and commercial scripts that connect to phpBB or anyother are not free either... if you want to stick with free stuff, you don't go where there is development. or you do the job yourself.

if you visit vb.org to have free stuff, this is not the best way to compliment the work of all coders here anyway... most of them work hard to learn this software and make it better... if they want to work for free, no problem, but many would like to have a living for this, because they want to expand a software that is not even free...

i never had a single client owner of vB that was requesting FREE jobs... they all know that a job is paid to the value of the result... some are even asking if they can be financed to have the work provided... some guys request donations on their sites to be able to pay for some addons... that mean they value the work of the coders... they know that can't have everything for free.

a good alternative would be a "hotscripts.com" - like website, where coders can advertise their releases - not their availability, but releases, and where companies can pay to have a better visibility (banners, icons, top of the lists, etc)... this would be the best situation possible, and no need for Jelsoft to negociate or evaluate the work of each coder...

i don't like the Rating idea to be good anyway... reputation exists on vB and nobody use it... why work on another alternative when the first one is already solid and not used... callback links is the best... a client visit the code repository, visit a coder, buy a script, and if he is happy, click back on the coder's website to the button "vote for me on the repository" ... bam, a vote... no vote == no value usually... (not === btw)

and i suggested something like that earlier this year, having an external site, and this was rejected for a single reason: Jelsoft want to control the visibility of their software, and this is good... internally, i have no problem... a repository of external links at vb.com is good anyway... or a new vb.net (for business on the net only)...