Regarding the vBHosting Hack

[Wayne Luke]

Originally Posted by SpeedStreet

I run a 501c3 charity. Part of my site deals with locations throughout the world. The subforums in question are only created when there is a justification for them. Essentially, these forums are run by the Moderators appointed to govern them, and I give them the choice as to how they want their subcategories they want. At the current time, they PM me their requests, and I research whether or not it is a prudent idea.

If these subforums are for the purposes of your international organization then you are not against the license agreement. If however you are creating forums for additional organizations and therefore sub-licensing vBulletin, then you are violating the license.

That is where the line is drawn. If this hack required people to be staff of the organization through moderator positions or administrator appointments, then there would be nothing wrong with it because it is a single installation on a single domain with a single organization and is not sub-licensing the software. However since it allows any registrant to in effect create their own community with unlimited control of how many forums, the look and feel of the forum, links back to their independant website and control over who can post and not post in the forum (via banning privileges), it violates the sub-licensing portion of the licensing agreement. And before you state that I should look at the hack and install it, I have it installed and I have looked at the code and I know exactly what it does.

It allows vBulletin License holder to issue defacto sub-licenses so that others can use the software. Even has a place where you can state your terms and conditions of their use of a license that a License holder has no right to grant..