Fixing vBulletin and bringing the hacker community back together.

[buro9]

Originally Posted by ap0c

jelsoft would lose alot of money on that deal. Most people like free things better than paying for them,bugs or not

I wasn't specifically trying to suggest open source as a route, I actually like Jelsoft and the point in an Enterprise edition was partly so that when I have to implement forums as part of my job that not only I can get the pleasure of working with software that I know and am comfortable with, but that Jelsoft would be making considerable money from the licenses and possibly a corporate support package (which both BT and PTV (as I had mentioned them) would pay a princely sum for).

My view is simply that vBulletin has part of the SME and nearly all of the home user 'hobbyist'/gamer markets sewn up. They lack penetration into the higher level markets, and thus the source of revenue in that space. Revenue (and innovation) which helps guarantee vBulletins longevity rather than leave the niche unfilled waiting for another product to appear.

As regards the directory... How many times have you seen something on a site and wondered how they did it? Where the hack was? So has to search at least: vBulletin.com, vBulletin.org, vBulletin.nl, The Admin Zone, vBulletin Templates, Everything VB to name but a few... to find out whether the modification you had seen had been published.

Similarly, when you want to develop a hack and wonder if it exists, don't you have to look all around again?

Do all vBulletin users have to do this? Are they even aware of all these sites? Most importantly though, is this the best thing that we (the community) can come up with to help the community get the most out of vBulletin? Should we not be seeking to find better ways of doing things?

As hack writer when I write hacks it's because I'm putting functionality onto my site and choose to publish the changes to help give back. Increasingly hack writers are having to ask where they should publish, what I've proposed would go some way to make it irrelevant... that a single repository listing all of the hacks and sending the admins to the right thread on the right site ensures that no hacks are lost and the effort in producing them wasted.

That's not a quest, it's a process. The same process that gave birth to vBulletin and nearly all other innovation by humans... the simple question of "Could this be better?", "Is there another way"? I just think that a neutral (run and modifiable by all - not owned by Jelsoft) Wiki would be better.