A Honest to Good Aggravated Criticism of Paid Modifications for vBulletin (Essay)

[cheat-master30]

So before I continue, I'll just add that I'm posting it here because quite a few portions are relevant to vBulletin.org, namely many major mods going paid, no free alternatives to many modifications, rather annoying and sneakly advertising of commercial products in topics for the Lite versions with weighted feature lists and it references vBulletin.org and the vBulletin modifiction community. Never the less, as originally posted here http://dsultimate.net/Board/upload/blog.php?b=407, this is my long indepth opinion about some of the ripoffs some paid modifications are.

And I know there will be some arguing over the contents of this thread and people saying how many times it's came up before, but oh well...

An Honest to Good Criticism of Paid Modifications for vBulletin

Now, I have wanted to say this for a while, and it does not only apply to vBulletin but any paid software (Invision Power Board seems to have quite a lot of this aggravation and ridiculously priced modifications as well for example), but I am getting increasingly annoyed at the emergence of paid modifications. Because now, it seems ANYTHING of substance is a paid modification, and the only chance of ever getting something fairly and with the rights the consumer deserves seems to be going the direction of either 'Wait for Jelsoft or Invision to make a version of it and sell it for a reasonable price with reasonsable features' or 'code it yourself'. But why should we, and here's my nicely written and detailed article about why this attitude and this exploitation of the consumer is getting ridiculous.

Part 1; Why the hell is everything for money now?

This one in particular really does annoy me. Every single possible major feature for any paid software (and much free software, but seemingly more so paid like vBulletin or Invison Power BOard) seems to come as a paid modification, despite the fact a good couple of years or months ago the community were perfectly willing to actually help each other rather than make a quick buck out of every possible piece of code. This then means that basic but needed features that the official companies behind vBulletin or Invision or whatever aren't in the process of making, haven't released yet or have no interest in making (think galleries, RPGs, points and shop systems, video systems, etc) basically force people to people ridiculously high charges and costs to use. But even the charging isn't the main point here, it's that there are NO alternatives to half of these useful albeit overpriced modifications. Take Windows for example. Don't like Windows and don't want to pay? Linux. Don't want to pay for Photoshop? The Gimp. Don't want to pay for a HTML or web editor? Take your pick from hundreds. Don't want to pay for Microsoft Office? Open Office. But for vBulletin and Invision there ARE NO alternatives. You either pay for a ridiculous overpriced modification, pay someone else to do it or don't get the feature. There should be alternatives. There needs to be some volunteers for something to get popular, and in theory, there should be no shortage. But it seems again, money hunger and craze has fell over the best coders in many communities.

Part 2; Prices from Hell?

The next thing that is annoying me about many of these modifications is that their prices are completely ridiculous for what they are actually offering. Take for example vB SEO (although both vB Commerce full version and many Inferno Technologies products have similarly high pricing schemes). They charge near enough the same as the core product their modification is based around. This is just stupid! You can't honestly say that your modification is better than the core product, or imply people should pay you more than they did for the base product! As far as I know, NONE of these modifications people are charging for are anywhere near as good as the vBulletin source code, and to be honest, if anyone was to charge $200 odd it should be Jelsoft, not the modification developers. Same with the other stuff. Let's take an example. It's hard to think of one, because not much is sold like software (things like cars and stuff don't exactly have add ons or modifications to the mainstream, let alone sell them for hundreds of dollars/pounds). But take gaming as an example (I will get criticism for comparing forum software to games and games consoles, just watch this space). Let's say you paid either $250 for a Wii, $200-400 for an Xbox 360 or $600 odd for a PS3. What would you expect to pay for typical software, or a game? You'd probably pay like $40 for a game. This of course is fairly reasonable. Now let's say some company asked you to pay TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS for a game. Would anyone actually buy it? It would be asking too much, and around the same as the actual console/core, and at the very least the company would get a flak from reviews (and lose about 2 grades) from the overpricing. But that seems to be common place for vBulletin add ons, charging as much or even MORE than what the core product offers. Seriously guys, price your products reasonably, there is no way you've built something that makes vBulletin look feature lacking, let alone anything that justifies a $200 price tag.

Seriously, $50 is a pretty fair price tag for something someone would want to pay for (the last part being especially important, three lines of code for something extremely minor, however cheap is a complete rip off when you're paying for it). $100 would probably be asking for a lot of work put into the hack, and that's probably the very upper boundary many of these modifications could get on a somewhat fair market. Finally though, anything above is just silly. You should never be charging nearly the full price of the base software for a modification, regardless of how big (if it's off the shelf and being sold to the public), let alone charging MORE than the base software. Stick to sane pricing people.

3. Lite does not equal feature non existant

Another point I would like to add and stress with all seriousness. When a piece of software is Lite, that is expected to be not exactly feature filled to the brim, but there is a general cut off point between ridiculous or nearly completely useless for all practical purposes and 'Lite'. First of all, don't even bother releasing a 'Lite version' if the lite version has exactly one feature and blatantly says 'buy the full version for something you could actually use to your site's advantage'. This has been done by quite a few Lite versions (I think vB Tube was a really good example of this, as it had exactly TWO features in the Lite mod and about 20 in the full one). A lite mod, at least if you're planning on releasing to vBulletin.org should ideally have some merit for why people would want to use it WITHOUT buying the full version, and should be more than merely an advertising token version blatantly saying 'Buy full version to get something that doesn't suck'. In this aspect, congratulations, because the one BEST EVER hack in terms of having a usable Lite version is probably Photoplog, where even the Lite version is equal to most full gallery solutions. Well done for not taking the easy and cheap way out.

Secondly, it's also incredibly annoying to see modifications that have huge lists of features in the free mod post and then 'Paid version only' after half of them in the list. To me, this is frankly just spamming and trying to advertise/make money off the hard work of sites like vBulletin.org. Say what features the Lite version has, and then just give a minor footnote that there is a paid version. There is no freaking need for a massive list of features unavailable in the version distributed on vBulletin.org, especially in such a way that it's clear you just want to advertise a paid product and make quick cash.

4. Encryption? What the hell?

Now, before anyone says that encrypting code is a good idea to protect the product, let me say one thing. The only damn reason vBulletin and Invision Power Board actually HAVE a modding community is because their code is not encyrpted and can be modified. This is one of the most major things the completely stupid idea of encryption just totally kills. You can't change the default product, you can't integrate with anything and you can't add features yourself, leaving you at the beck and call of the developer unless you try to literally crack the code with some kind of tool. Secondly, it leaves you at the mercy of the developer for any kind of fixes, whether security related or otherwise, and if just one flaw comes out and it is fixed quickly, your board could either malfunction or be hacked via a vulnerability that hasn't been fixed and you have no possible way to fix. Which as you can tell by Microsoft/Windows/Internet Explorer and their track record, can be suicidal for web or computer safety.

This major problem with modifying the code due to encryption, which it seems nearly every paid hack has gone the way of (despite evidence from vBulletin, Invision and various other paid products that things are way better without it in nearly every way) is that when the developer dies, the hack dies with it. If it was a free modification, and used non encrypted code, it could be continued or ported to another version of the forum software or even completely different software, but with encrypted code, only the developer can update it, and if they ever go missing for long periods of time or go completely defunct, there goes the hack ever being updated or working with future software. Even more so if for some ridiculous reason, the entire modification depends on a call back to the developer's site, which could easily render the entire thing unusable if they go down or out of business. Which reminds me... gee, I really don't want to know what happened to those using RPG Inferno and such like when they closed, because I guess that spells the end for anyone using their modifications...

So what do I propose here? Well to be honest, I propose people start using somewhat common sense thinking and stop trying to charge people for pretty much everything related to vBulletin or Invision Power Board (just because we paid for a license doesn't mean we just have money to throw around everywhere), that they stop charging extortionate, ridiculous prices for modifications that are sometimes higher than those of the official product the modifications are based on (isn't reselling code for a commercial product kind of illegal anyway?) Better yet, why don't we just boycott this complete stupidty and let the market itself destroy them and their ridiculous strategies. Now, I know almost immediately I will get a ton of hatred and flaming for suggesting that oh... maybe more people should stop charging for modifications or charge reasonable prices and that encryption is bad and should not be used. Well let me add to this article a few more things, another section for the developers and coders who likely think things ranging from (if it's so easy, build it yourself), (you're a coder...) and (I'll start extolling the virtues of charging for modifications and blah blah). Never the less, here it is.

If you don't like the modification stop using it

Again, read part 1 of this article, or more in fact, this blantantly obvious line:

'But for vBulletin and Invision there ARE NO alternatives.'

Which is the point. It isn't fair to MAKE someone have to use a paid add on for a feature that other software can deliver with add ons or modifications for free or that would have been free a few years ago. It also seems like very few people have the interest in making modifications longer than a few lines any more (and yes, I would probably release any modification of substantial scale I made for my own site if I knew quite how to program that well). Just look for the modifications here for vBulletin:

Custom Coding costs thousands of dollars/pounds...

Yet the word custom pretty much says why. Getting a developer or programmer to work for you and build a custom script is likely going to cost far more by nature since they can't really resell the script for extra profit and you're basically paying them like an employee or freelance worker. You can't expect to sell an off shelf modification for a price that exceeds even the base products price, unless maybe your work was a few hundred times more in depth, feature rich, optimised etc than the foundation is was built on. And to my knowledge, I don't know any paid add on (or free one) for vBulletin, Invision, etc, that is not custom for one site that has enough to justify such a ridiculously steep price tag.

Piracy forces encryption!

Again, let me show you a few things. One, there an awful lot of products, paid even that aren't so scared of pirates and copyright infringement that they allow people to view and edit the source code, which has benefited us all. Like vBulletin and Invision Power Board. Secondly, if there's a problem with piracy, that means two things should be on your mind:

1. Your product is good enough to warrant it being ripped off. So good job, more people like it!
2. You should think of how to use something intelligent to stop pirates. Like you know, legal action, DCMA notices, notices to the datacentre and hosting company of the site distributing your product illegally and maybe a lawsuit if you really think you're losing that much money.

Besides, what could you get back via not encrypting your code? Well a modification community for one thing and your product being potentially supported by the community when you personally go out of business or shut down or quit. And people being able to run your product after you close your services...

I hope I made my thoughts clear.