[Martin]

Originally Posted by The Geek

Taking a step back, it seems to me that it is Jelsoft that is wanting it both ways. You want an free modding community to promote sales of your software but Jelsoft wants to totally control it, yet distance itself from it. You want it run a certain way but won't pay people to do it. You feel everyone should contribute their work FOC but you guys will charge for your yours (and no one should ever mention otherwise).

vBulletin/Jelsoft does not want to "control" vBulletin.org. We actually take a pretty much hands off approch to the community here. As Wayne said, it is designed as a "member-to-member" community.
We do not exhort any control over the way this site is run. We do work with the vB.org staff to help resolve issues, but we do not step on their toes in the way they run the site.
As odd as it might seem to you, we have to maintain this sort of approach in order to "distance" ourselves. If we do not "distance" ourselves, we then become by implication responsible for the hacks published here, therefore responsibe for supporting code we did not write.

We do not force people to release code here, so your accusation that we feel everyone should release their code here for free is unfounded and without merit. Does vBulletin.org benefit us? Yes, it most certainly does. Should we be ashamed of that? No, we shouldn't.

It also provides a well known place for coders to showcase their talents and turn that talent into money by taking paid jobs that are available through the "Services" forum, and a lot of coders here have benefited through providing great lite versions of their paid software additions to vBulletin, so it's not exactly a one way street in regards to making money. Unlike services like eLance and RentACoder no commission is received by Jelsoft for any paid work you pick up here.
There are over 3,200 requests in the Service Requests forum, and lord knows how many deals have been handled via PM. So the coders here, should they choose to, can use this as a place to make money for themselves. Somehow that seems live it achieves something like parity.

Originally Posted by The Geek

vbulletin.org is a brand name and every much a part of vBulletin as .com - Jelsoft needs to support .org so it is as strong of a brand and as beneficial to Jelsoft as it can be.

I look forward to seeing the changes played out.

We do try to provide as much support for .org as we can. Again, we also have to maintain a hands-off stance in a most regards.