vBulletin 4 - What's the deal with this!?

[ludachris]

Originally Posted by cosy

the only problem is for ppl that got vblog money spend for nothing
who got vblog should have a discount

That's my biggest gripe. I've paid for owned licenses for both vb and vb blog (a few of them actually since I own several sites) and will now have to pay almost as much for an upgrade for each of my sites as I did for the owned licenses. That's extremely expensive. And as MrEyes said above, I have 2 weeks to make the purchase or I'll have to pay almost double the cost of my original owned license fees - wow.

vBulletin was already the most expensive forum software on the market. I'm really not sure these price hikes are a good idea. The quality of the new product better be that much better than the existing product or else there is no justification for it other than greed on the part of the new ownership.

I think maybe there's a conflict of interest with the new ownership - they happen to own over a hundred vb-powered websites that cover several different markets. Seems to me they're on track to make websites that compete with their network pay a lot more money to run the same software they run, essentially, driving down competition and giving themselves an advantage (assuming of course, that vb4 is that much better than other scripts on the market). Smart I suppose.

--------------- Added [DATE]1255532889[/DATE] at [TIME]1255532889[/TIME] ---------------

Originally Posted by Paul M

Its is not the job of vbulletin.org staff to inform you about vb4 licencing, Lynne answered a question, and provided a link to the correct source of information.

Thing is, the correct source of information she linked to differs from the email I received yesterday.

As a preferred customer with an active license, we are excited to offer the vBulletin Publishing Suite at a pre-sale discount price of only $130 (over 50% off regular price). This is a truly limited one-time special offer giving you $120 off the upgrade price but will expire on Friday October 30, 2009.

Seems I will have to pay $130 for an upgrade being that I own a vb and vb blog license.

[Dan!]

This vbulletin 4.0 is looking to be a hefty bill on my bank account.

I personally dont see why they are doing a new billing system, the old one is fine and good for first time buyers (getting leased etc).

I have the full license, but im debating if I should upgrade to this 4.0 or not, it looks kinda dodgy if you ask me.

And us vBulletin skin coders are going to loose our buisness, as by the looks of the screenshots - the standard skin is already editted to a big degree, then users can just copy the skin and do whatever with it alot easier
Taking us out of buisness really..

AND
the fact that all the styles will not work on this vb 4.0, thats alot of skin editting and remaking to do.

[mp3u]

My big worry is that most of the mods from 3.8x won't work in vB4. There is no serious detail on what will be included yet. So if vB4 ends up being light on features then you will have to wait until these are rewritten by vB.org coders and tested before being able to provide certain features that members may have come to seriously rely on.
It seems really unfair to have such a tight window to take advantage of the new price given that there is no demo. Seriously, how can anyone be expected to buy something without seeing it? I've been waiting for vB4 since I got my board up and running but now I simply don't know what to do... Maybe buy it then wait a few months before making the change over so that there are proven mods, bugs fixed and styles etc available...

[TNCclubman]

I dont think any of the current mods out there will work on vB4. No one even knows which coders are going to stick around to work on vB4 yet. vB4 is going to have just the features listed, it may be a long time before any mods are written for it. Apparently its a complete overhaul so no styles or mods work on it. None.

[Lynne]

Originally Posted by TNCclubman

I dont think any of the current mods out there will work on vB4. No one even knows which coders are going to stick around to work on vB4 yet. vB4 is going to have just the features listed, it may be a long time before any mods are written for it. Apparently its a complete overhaul so no styles or mods work on it. None.

Actually, the code is just fine (in most cases). I've found that if you just eval the templates using the new method and then modify the templates to use the new syntax, your modification will work just fine.

[kall]

Originally Posted by ludachris

vBulletin was already the most expensive forum software on the market.

That's not actually true. I can't find it now, but there is at least one that runs into the thousands of dollars for a license.

[ludachris]

Originally Posted by kall

That's not actually true. I can't find it now, but there is at least one that runs into the thousands of dollars for a license.

There probably are a few options more expensive, but in terms of widely used forum scripts, vbulletin is at the top.