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

[cheat-master30]

Thanks for answering, and it's nice to know that nearly everyone that could possibly give their opinion in this topic has given their opinion, since it's made this into a rather interesting debate to say the least.

Never the less, I may as well answer some of your points, since I like an intelligent discussion on various forums and what not.

*blinks* that was a lot of reading, and why include vbcommerce in the post, its free when its released, sures it's encrypted but still free for 1 shop, *cringes* but the core is free, and its not a lite script, all our core mods are free and 1000's of hours building them so end users here and on our site can benifit and I think between dark and I we've done a hella job supporting both on this site and other.

Yes, it's a lot of reading. I do like a minimum of a thousand words in every single article I've written yet, or at least five hundred words, because bite sized articles I find kind of boring. Back to the question, the reason I included vB Commerce in this is pretty much two fold; because the premium editions go on a price scale I last saw in Jive software (aka, rather expensive on a per user basis), and mainly because of the encryption point. In fact, it's the second point that is my key gripe, partly because of three things:

1. Being encrypted, you cannot tell a multitude of important things. Aka, what the code is, what's included in the code (such as ability for developers to disable at any time, security issues and bugs and hidden features), the quality of the code and pretty much every other thing.

2. You can't add any features yourself, integrate it with anything custom coded or fix any bugs you've found yourself, including security issues.

3. Call home via license system. And I've read that on vbcredits.com, which basically means the server needs to connect to your server every single time the script is run, which means sites without such access (aka, on many shared hosts) are completely unable to use the script. Plus, it means if vbcredits ever goes bust, out of existance or the domain is lost, the script is completely useless.

Aka the usual reasons why many people do NOT run encrypted software, and reasons which need to be answered.

And I know you've done a great job and a lot of work (I was hearing of vB Commerce first sometime last year, which means probably over a year of work already, a lot for a modification). I would honestly in that case probably be fine with paying the full price for the most featured packed version if it wasn't encrypted, albeit this seems to be something paid mod authors can't seem to grasp (aka, encryption loses them even more sales than the prices).

Our general argument as far as pro addons go is if others can make money from our work we should earn a little bit. I think thats fair. People can earn a hell of a lot form our free mods as well which makes up 90% of our work. go figour..

Of course it's fair. I can't really say anything about the rest of your answer, it's saying about the price which I've responded to.

[PixelFx]

Feel free to carry this debate on at our site if you want, we can answer any questions related to our products there. I can understand both legit and non legit business not liking encryption however we back and support all our work for legal members 100%.

As for free or not, I think most of us here would like to earn enough do what we love full time, both dark and I work full time jobs on top of doing what we do here and on our vbc site.

As for how long we've worked on vbc, we've worked on all of it for over 2 years now.

At the sacrafice of family putting up placks on the walls saying have you see pixelfx / darkwaltz4, missing in action, or leaving food at our door steps hoping we'd come out for air. Vs coding 1000s of hours litterally.

The primary focus of this stuff has been to help vbulletin owners earn income with their sites. But we also want to earn enough to live and or do this full time. So we've had to make choices, which with this debate people are either happy or not so happy with.

But when it comes down to it, everyone on this site is doing there best to release something cool that will enchance vbulletin beyond its' basic features. And for free when humanly possible.

[MarkoP]

Originally Posted by Dean C

Remember not everyone has free time. I contributed most to this community when I was a lot younger, still at school and college (a good amount of years ago now). I didn't have to pay bills, or pay for food to put in my mouth and I had an abundance of free time. But times change, and now I have to support myself, pay for my education and pay my rent and utility bills etc.

I could sit around coding all day to give you guys something for free, or I could sit around all day coding something and make some money to support myself and avoid getting into debt.

Go figure which one I choose, and also note that a lot of the people on here have far more to support than I do. There's a lot of coders on here who have families to support. Do you expect them to give up their work for free too?

Well said!!

I happily pay for work I want done. In fact I'd rather, I usually end up with far better mods that actually 'work'...

Originally Posted by PixelFx

or leaving food at our door steps hoping we'd come out for air.

so you loved my apple-pie, don't you ??...

[MrFlicks]

I have ideas RE a Charity addon/mod distributable as both open source and paid versions that could well may be relevant to this in more ways than are immediately presently apparent . . .

[PixelFx]

Originally Posted by nexialys

so you loved my apple-pie, don't you ??...

what type of apples? mmmm

the one designed in the bottom of my monitor.. lol

[cheat-master30]

Although not quite related to the topic, I'm curious to know exactly why you've made every single forum on vbcredits.com private? It's kind of really bad for SEO, and I've seen it so much on new forums now it's getting rather annoying (and with the current post count there, I don't really think having say... more members than posts will look any good).

[J105C]

I agree with everything the thread starter said. Good thoughts and good opinions

J105C, you're a client, for sure.. lol