[Elwood Blues]

Hello, esteemed members. First of all, I would like to say that I'm the license owner of the board in question. We won't hide any of our efforts from your review.

The board itself can be found here. The project's inspriration and execution can be found here.

I sincerely regret that this has come to your attention. My former staff member is either trying to sully our tiny community's name or he has completely missed the point of the whole exercise.

If you have concerns, I'll try to answer them in this post.

Concern One: vBulletin is not open source so we cannot modify it.

True - vBulletin is NOT licensed as open source, but no one has ever claimed it is. Its source code is licensed to US. Does that mean we cannot modify it - NO. Under the license terms we are free to modify any and all source code supplied by vBulletin, although we do so at our own risk, and modifications will not be supported by Jelsoft.

Concern Two: If we alter the vBulletin source code we cannot publish it.

Worng-ish. Any modifications to the source are ours. We can publish our modification. We are, of course, prohibited from publishing the code around the modification - it is not ours to distribute. If I make a change to five lines of PHP, then I can publish those five lines. If I make a change to a single character within a line of PHP, I can publish the line. It all comes down to common sense. When publishing code a 'fair' proportion of it has to be ours.

Concern Three: W3:CP is all about hacking vBulletin source.

Wrong. A fair proportion of the project will be about looking at vBulletin hacks, additions and plugins, but we are also actively looking at all options. If a particular feature is best served by writing our own Java applet, then so be it - such an application would have NO reliance on vBulletin code whatsoever, such is the case with the current IRC client on the board.

Concern Four: Open Source Software is free of charge - and therefore worthless.

Wrong. Open source software (when licensed as such) is 'free' as in speech, and for the most part, free as in beer. You can charge for open source software if you like - and you can charge for support of the software. The governing principle behind the open source movement is that the source code can be REDISTRIBUTED with modifications.

Concern Five: On staff can modify the vBulletin code.

True. We can modify it as much as we like - but we cannot open it up as a free for all whereby all board members can look at the code and change it - that would be tantamount to 'distribution'. So, how do we allow others to work on the code? The plain and simple truth is that, when it comes to vBulletin hacks - we don't. However, that does not stop ANYONE writing PHP and submitting it to us for testing and integration into the vBulletin code. Which was always the plan.

Concern Six: You can't test vBulletin code without another vBulletin license.

Wrong. You can create a new board that is password protected and available to staff only. A publicly available, complete installation of vBulletin would require a new license - obviously. Single pages testing new functionality can be made available to the general public - as part of the main board. There is nothing in the license that prohibits us from testing a full board privately or individual hacks / pages publicly (and safely).

If you have a valid license, you may set up an additional test forum in order to test code, template and database modifications. To make this clear to us and our license verification procedures, place it in a directory called 'testvb' and be sure to password protect it. It must not be accessible by the general public.

Now, regardless of the fact that a huge percentage of all End User License Agreements are un-enforceable, there is an imperative to act in accordance with the spirit, if not the letter of the agreement. Again, it is all about common sense - if it feels wrong, it probably is wrong. Publishing a vB template for all to see would be wrong. Publish three modified lines, just fine.

Here is the EULA - http://www.vbulletin.com/order/license_agreement.php

In closing, I would like to say again that I'm very sorry that this was brought up, not because we've done anything wrong or because we have something to hide. But because it's a non-issue and the thread starter is a disgruntled ex-staff member who's doing his best to get me into trouble.

Thank you for your time and consideration.