[Slave]

Originally Posted by MarcoH64

Asking for a donation is not going commercial.

I wasn't really saying it was .. but surely coders will think, after not getting many donations, "Bugger this, I'm going to start charging" ..

It's all to do with the mind set. In the old days the community did hacks because they wanted to and for no other reason. Then we had people see others ask for donations and do the same. Now we have people making their hacks commercial and others will follow suit. As I said, it's all a slippery slope to a situation where no hacks are released unless they are commercial. A sad day indeed for places like vb.org ..

Frankly, in that sort of situation, I'd prefer to see the vBulletin team themselves start to release commercial hacks/addons to vB than have to pay money to people who have no track record and could close up shop the day after you've paid your money.

vB Mail is a case in point .. I paid for the hack, which included future updates, and a few weeks after I'd paid the owner said he'd stopped working on it due to him seeing his hack on a warez download page. Who's to say that won't happen with other commercial hacks?

[high]* Slave shrugs ..
[/high]
While I know the percentage of vB owners who hack their forums is low compared to those who don't, I feel this will be the slow death of the vb.org community and in turn vBulletin will start to feel the effects.

I know that I'm starting to look at other forum software and their communities "just in case" .. which I wasn't before.