RE: vb3 Call To Home

[filburt1]

The hack is allowed to be used, just not allowed to be hosted here. This is Jelsoft's official site, after all.

[Ocean]

Originally Posted by JimpsEd

This file has already been sprawled accross the web, i'm glad to say

I suppose it's just one good thing about places like VBHACKS.us

Boo dictatorships!

Is there one unofficial vB Hacks board that stands out above the rest?

[Zachery]

Originally Posted by JimpsEd

This file has already been sprawled accross the web, i'm glad to say

I suppose it's just one good thing about places like VBHACKS.us

Boo dictatorships!

You need to relize while this is more harmfull to vBulletin's community than helpfull to the very few.

This "hack" is just helping wearz teams get their distrubted versions out in the field faster and more piracy could cause prices to go up. :/

[j_86]

Zachery;

I understand this completely. But I do not think it is right to bring in the "this piracy costs us X money". It's just like with the RIAA and Record Industry situation - costing them X Billion a year.

But it isn't costing them anything. What percentage of people who warez things (including VB) would pay for it if they could not Warez it? Be realistic; the figure is less than 1% i'm sure. So really, saying that Warez may put prices up for us isn't (to me) a serious or plausable notion at all.

But I respect what Jelsoft do with managing their content on their sites.

However, if good coding and progmatic practice is not going to be used by Jelsoft (to stop the long loading times when your servers cannot be communicated with for whatever reason), then I think that the arguements for it being made available to the masses is stronger than those against.

By the way... I thought that VB.orgs licencing system was "now secure enough" to deal with this kind of thing?

Correct me if i'm wrong, but by posting a hack as an attatchment here, you can only download it if you already have an active VB licence.

[Zachery]

Originally Posted by JimpsEd

Zachery;

I understand this completely. But I do not think it is right to bring in the "this piracy costs us X money". It's just like with the RIAA and Record Industry situation - costing them X Billion a year.

But it isn't costing them anything. What percentage of people who warez things (including VB) would pay for it if they could not Warez it? Be realistic; the figure is less than 1% i'm sure. So really, saying that Warez may put prices up for us isn't (to me) a serious or plausable notion at all.

But I respect what Jelsoft do with managing their content on their sites.

However, if good coding and progmatic practice is not going to be used by Jelsoft (to stop the long loading times when your servers cannot be communicated with for whatever reason), then I think that the arguements for it being made available to the masses is stronger than those against.

By the way... I thought that VB.orgs licencing system was "now secure enough" to deal with this kind of thing?

Correct me if i'm wrong, but by posting a hack as an attatchment here, you can only download it if you already have an active VB licence.

I am not speaking for jelsoft, just thinking that way, the music industry is a multibillion dollar industry, Jelsoft is a small company, all forms of piracy hurt us much greater than copying a few MP3's.

Yes, doesnt mean there are not people who have licenses and do illegal things with their files.

[j_86]

I understand you may not be speaking for Jelsoft, but again I do not know where you are coming from with the "hurt us" part, as 99.9% of the time you wouldn't see the financial benifit anyway.

[filburt1]

Originally Posted by JimpsEd

However, if good coding and progmatic practice is not going to be used by Jelsoft (to stop the long loading times when your servers cannot be communicated with for whatever reason), then I think that the arguements for it being made available to the masses is stronger than those against.

The only effect that has ever had for me is the top frame not loading quickly, which only shows version information anyway.

The Call Home also checks for the latest version of the software, and many of vB"s releases are security fixes. I am normally opposed to call home coding, but disabling this call home is akin to disabling Windows Update.

[Ocean]

Originally Posted by Zachery

I am not speaking for jelsoft, just thinking that way, the music industry is a multibillion dollar industry, Jelsoft is a small company, all forms of piracy hurt us much greater than copying a few MP3's.

I'll put in my two cents here.


Software developers love to talk about how much piracy ruins them. But they rarely want to admit how much piracy actually helps them.


Developers get a large amount of free advertising for their software through piracy. Not only that, it's also advertising that carries with it an inherent vouching. People don't bother to pirate crap. There might be 20 different companies making 20 different versions of a particular type of software. The two or three versions that Pirate groups bother to hack are most likely to be the best. People know this - and they use this fact to help them narrow their choices to the best of the bunch. Looking at it in that light, it's an honor for vBulletin to be so prominent among hackers - you don't see too much of the competition, do you?

In addition, pirated software is typically made and circulated among industry-involved people. In other words, you'll find a lot more computer consultants and IT personnel working with pirated apps than you will farmers. This means that many of the people who work with pirated apps are inherently in the best position to recommend these same products for purchase in the companies or clients that they work with/for.

Personally, I can tell you that I have come across a lot of pirated applications (if nothing else, a lot of my clients install them - and I have to deal with them). As such, I have had exposure to applications that normally cost $5,000 - $20,000. These applications are well beyond my ability to purchase. But having had exposure to pirated versions of them, I can now give genuine recommendations and purchasing advice to companies who ask me to tell them what to buy.

In addition, I have seen some of these pirated apps and bought them myself. These are applications that I would never have purchased were it not for a previously existing pirated copy. Incidentally, vBulletin is one such app.

When Adobe Photoshop first came out, people were swapping and sharing the install disks like crazy. Adobe knew about it - and do you know what they did? Absolutely nothing. It was giving them exposure in a way that they couldn't *pay* for. Not only was the word being spread that there was a great new application on the market - but people were also gaining proficiency on those pirated copies. This meant that the market was starting to be filled by people who knew how to use this software and could genuinely recommend them to the companies they worked for.


Developers love to talk about how much money they're losing to piracy. But the fact is that a person looking to improve their marketable skills and obtains a pirated version of Avid SoftImage (for example) will most likely have never been able to afford it on their own (how many people have $10,000 to shuck on a whim?). So, just what money is Avid losing? If this person could not have obtained a pirated version, they wouldn't have bought it anyway. Zero money lost to Avid.

However, by obtaining that pirated version, they become acquainted with it, learn it - and now, when their company is looking for a 3D Animation solution, this person can speak up and say "Hey, I've worked with Avid SoftImage. It's a GREAT program, and I know how to use it". Boom - a sale made, and $10,000 in the bank for Avid, who otherwise might never have seen that money - as the company in question might have chosen a competitor's product if left to their own devices.


So, I will say that piracy can do both good AND bad things for companies. It's rare for developers to acknowledge this - but that doesn't make it false.

[Ocean]

Originally Posted by filburt1

The Call Home also checks for the latest version of the software, and many of vB"s releases are security fixes. I am normally opposed to call home coding, but disabling this call home is akin to disabling Windows Update.

I disagree. Disabling Windows Update disables the mechanism by which you would normally apply patches. The vB Call Home feature does not *apply* anything. It just informs you of when a new version is released.

I would change your analogy to say that disabling vB's Call Home feature is akin to not checking Windows Update regularly. But users can check vB's site for new versions at any time, and they can apply those new versions at any time as well.

Eliminating the Call Home feature does not keep a person from doing anything vital.


I realize that it's a challenge to implement anti-piracy measures on anything that is Viewable Source. But that doesn't change the fact that many people are principally opposed to Call Home features - and they have good reason and every right to be.

[filburt1]

Originally Posted by Ocean

I would change your analogy to say that disabling vB's Call Home feature is akin to not checking Windows Update regularly. But users can check vB's site for new versions at any time, and they can apply those new versions at any time as well.

Respectfully, do you really think people are going to religiously check vB's product page to check for new versions? Windows XP SP2's auto-updating enabled by default was set by Microsoft because they knew people never check Windows Update every day. The majority of vB users probably will never upgrade minor versions of vB because they don't know better.