For years, Jelsoft has reaped the benefits of an enhanced feature list based on the "free" donations of it's customers. It's a two-way street here, but the money has always flowed one way. I can hardly think of a more seemingly implausible yet brilliant and successful business plan than that of Jelsoft.
So, now you are asking about requiring a "free" product as a requisite for your "Certification" ... which, you know increase the sales of the annointed.
Why not just let the market place determine the fate of commercial products --- without Jelsoft involving itself in that process? Why does Jelsoft feel it should always flex it's muscle?
My idea has nothing to do with flexing muscle but providing customers with the services and resources they demand. Believe it or not, many of our customers do not want to use this site. They find it chaotic, unresponsive and unhelpful. I am not saying that is true but that is their experience. They would rather we just point them to a list of providers who can fulfill their needs. Now, I can create an arbitrary list of providers with designers, webhosts and programmers and feed this list to the customers who call on the phone every day. Or, I can devise a way to allow longstanding members of the aftermarket community and vBulletin.org to monetize their hard work, receive paid contracts and profit from vBulletin.
It is hardly a one-way street as you said and never has been. There are quite a few companies that exist today because they provide services and/or software for vBulletin. I am just trying to think of a way to make our thousands of customers aware of them so they can make more money. However the history of this community and the aftermarket of vBulletin has already proven that without some control, people will take on more work than they can handle, disappear for months on end without notifying their customers and so forth. We, Jelsoft, need to try and insulate our customers from that and the only way to do that would be a Certified Provider program. It would be a voluntary program if implemented and any requirements would be reasonable with feedback from potential providers going into the program.
You may see that as flexing muscles but I see it as protecting our tens of thousands of customers. And no matter how you slice it, this site exists for the sole purpose of satifying the needs of Jelsoft Customers in expanding vBulletin. It has no other purpose. It is used as a minor sales tool but it isn't a single source largely responsible for sales of vBulletin.
08-25-2005, 04:12 PM
Threaded Mode