[tamarian]

Originally Posted by Wayne Luke

Finally...
I am not sure I really understand the animosity towards commercial hacks and add-ons myself.

You don't understand it because it's not there. After all, all the opinions expressed in this thread (for and against) are by people who already paid for vBulletin, which is commercial.

There is some animosity based on what many have seen take place here, where some commercial developers play by the rules, and some don't. Don't like to name names, unless pressed for it, but I'm sure many know of some examples of both, and they tend to stink the forum. Once the flood gate is open, you'll get more of that, especially when you have competing hacks, one's free, one's commercial, each with it's own fans, and the fans yelling how each gets their money's worth, our's is better, but you have to pay to see it, since the code is encypted, nananana. Then the possibility of copy-cats selling other's work with some changes and removal of copyrights, and possibly encrypting it as well.

Plus license checking. You see how many members on vb.com post other's forums and ask if it's pirated? Well, multiply that by the number of commercial hacks here, and there will be a lot more piracy accusations, and questions as to license keys, compounded by the different methods used by each commercial hacks, and how they do, us or misuse auto validations.

I'd rather those issues/fights take place elsewhere on the commercial developer's site, or a commercial directory site, and not see all the drama and stink here on vb.org.