[Brad]

Originally Posted by Talisman

Why can't people who want to turn this into a business on the side for themselves do that on their own.. or go in together and attract their own customers without inserting that commercial element here?

I think the general feeling here is setting up their own site for this is still not going to solve the issue of having their products in a place most of the vBulletin users will see. They gear their products toward vBulletin users so it's only natural that they would want to be able to run ads for them here.

I do agree that the poll is not a good way to look at how the overall community feels about this, although it's showing a mainly 50/50 split at this time only a handful of the users have even voted in the thread.

Personally I don't think free support would dry up here if we went ahead and supported commercial hacks in some form. It takes a lot more then coding a few php scripts to sell your work.

You have to set-up your own website (hosting, vBulletin, domain name, the works), you have to provide your clients with support, you have to fix bugs within your scripts, you have to get the word out about your 'business'. All of this costs money and time, and if you happen to take off soon you'll be paying people to help with support/code.

Now out of the people posting hacks and giving support here, I'd be willing to bet less then 10% of them would have the time or desire to do all of this. Most of these guys and girls work a regular job, or go to school (or both) and do this has a hobby in their free time.

If any of you have been around for sometime at sitepoint you'll know their history with this very same issue. At one point the site was basically 'ad-free' but now it is not. Has the free support there dried up yet? No, in fact it has grown and is still doing so.