Jelsoft sold ?! not me!

<a href="http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=235378" target="_blank">http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=235378</a>

as James may be in a April fools journey, i will wait for the pro-official echoes...

but if this is right, Jelsoft is now part of a bigger company, with guys who are paid more seriously and that means we are now all Volunteered within a mega-corporation...

i don't remember if Microsoft have volunteered persons in its charge, or if people are working for free in the Hilton hotels, but i think we will now have to face the facts... Jelsoft is not the place we were all welcome anymore...

i give support for free, i even coded for free for a long time... this have to end with this announcement.

vBulletin.org is not only a place for coders to share code, 25%+ of the actual system is based on our own work provided for free and taken without our consent to build this tool that was sold to a company with a lot of resources...

we all deserve to be paid for the result. and we will not be paid. being paid is not only important for the cash, it is important for the situation... if us coders would not have provided these hacks for years, who would tell if Jelsoft would've been sold in this situation... we're the ones who make the vBulletin software look better for each version... we're also are the guys who support this software because at vB.com they are not supporting it when it is modified... and i can tell it is rare to see unmodified forums these days...

anyway... James, this is not a joke to make if you are on an April Fools journey... and if this is the real facts, sorry but i quit... for good... that's enough being frustrated by the "way" we are not supported by Jelsoft, now we have to be unsupported by a bigger company that will never pay us a penny even if we're the ones to make it rich...

think of it coders, they are now able to pay the guys who support their software... if you do not receive a cent of what they will gain from your work, do the same... quit !!!... you can work by yourself on your own side... vb.org will now be a place for volunteers who have too much time to spend and are not interested to be paid... never!

[smacklan]

I'd say this is not a joke. As to the rest of your post, you would have never been compensated by Jelsoft anyway so what difference does this make? Actually it's the work you and others have done for free that helped put Jelsoft in this position in the first place and just smart business on their part. I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but something like this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone here given the success of vBulletin so I really don't see how anything has changed...just my 2 cents.

[Dismounted]

Unexpected....

Originally Posted by smacklan

I'd say this is not a joke. As to the rest of your post, you would have never been compensated by Jelsoft anyway so what difference does this make? Actually it's the work you and others have done for free that helped put Jelsoft in this position in the first place and just smart business on their part. I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but something like this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone here given the success of vBulletin so I really don't see how anything has changed...just my 2 cents.

you are exactly right smacklan... i do not tell the opposite... the thing is that for the situation, i would expect Jelsoft to at least support vb.org in a better way, like giving coders here more flexibility on releasing the hacks we do... providing a better SDK when they knew it would be great for their situation - they were negociating for a long time i know it - and now, they release one product after the others, surprising everybody around because Jelsoft always told they would not do other things than forum... not surprising now that they are sold...

anyway... this will surely bring a lot of debates, i'm the first one to comment on this because i was posted early.. lol

oh, and btw, the only thank given by James is for the clients... THANKS JAMES FOR THE SUPPORT!

[smacklan]

hehe...I agree with everything you've said (for once lol). Now that Jelsoft is part of a conglomerate, it will be interesting to see what happens with this site...and all us third party vendors out there who have enjoyed success supporting vbulletin.

[RedTyger]

If I may steer the thread back in the direction of Planet Earth a little... we do not deserve to be paid. We are volunteers. We knew what the arrangement was when we signed up, we did everything we have done off our own backs, without obligation.

If you do not want to contribute, then do not contribute. If you want to be paid for coding, get a coding job. If you do not want to be a volunteer, do not volunteer. If you do not want to give away work or support for free, then do not work or give support for free. I think it is fair to say that the above is common sense and everyone should have understood it without creating their own expectations.

Yes, Jelsoft do very well out of the community here. Yes, they could support it a little better. That is all you can reasonably ask for. I honestly thought this was a joke at first, I don't understand how what you are saying can make sense.

you do not understand because you're not here from the begining... i'm here from day 2, i can say... (this account is my #3 since 2001...) and i can tell that if there is a way we'd be paid is not with cash but at least with credits and respect...

it is not about contributing to a big company that is a problem.. it is that now they will have paid coders to do the support we were doing, they will have paid guys to deliver the hacks we were doing, and we have no credits whatsoever nowhere...

i actually did not volunteered here to provide codes for fun and see other guys being paid for the hacks i've coded... i can tell it was frustrating for me to see that the latest enhancements of vbulletin were first coded by guys here, without having a single line of credit in the code nowhere... and most of the coders who were "stolen" that way are now out of the business, or at least have quit vb.org to code for commercial projects instead because they are not fools...

i'm one of them, even if i continued to chat here... i actually have more than 3500 lines of code in 3.6.7, and my name is nowhere... reason: they jut changed the code or simply renamed the variables so the hacks integrated are not "from" someone else...

actually, this is the exact same situation that IPB came with 4 years ago... small project with contributors, switched to a commercial kind of way, and tada... everybody have to pay twice the price for the next release, etc etc...

the situation is not about coders volunteering... you can always do it... this is a free world. the thing is that now, you will have to think that some other guys will be doing the same thing as you do, and your name will be nowhere... before, when Jelsoft was small, this was ok, they did not change the code of the software based on hacks released here that much, and they were happy to name the guys who contributed... not anymore.

and i'm not frustrated... i have quit the community long time ago, even if i released some gadgets not long ago... but that's about it... not sure nobody else will do it or not...

it's more a question of why you are here actually...

[Dutchmang]

This does not add up to me.... The buyer is a Web site operator not a software developer. While I always thought Jelsoft would get bought, I was hoping it would be to someone who could help professionalize their processes.... So I don't get it.

I work for one of those real companies and saw how "loosey-goosey" Jelsoft did things compared to the discipline required for real commercial software. Figured it was just a matter of getting to the point where "adult supervision" was going to be required. Nothing bad about that, just the consequence of success.

Instead they sell out to a media company whose president looks like Willem DeFoe. Apparently the bidding never got very hot.

Not feeling good about this.... will watch this closely. There's another shoe to drop IMHO.

[Ohiosweetheart]

I have to agree with Dutch ^. The buyer is a surprise. Here's their website -
http://www.internetbrands.com/ib/

??????? Makes no sense to me. But not alot of what they do, does

I'm betting that there will be a pricetag increase, probably sooner rather than later. When you take into account that the price for a vB licence hasn't increased for a long time, you can just about count on it.

[sebbe]

Perhaps they should give a few people credit, be it in the actual code or at some page on their website, for contributing with ideas or code snippets. I wouldn't expect anything more in addition to that, really.