Paid Mods

[filburt1]

While running the risk of being shot for performing my moderator duties, I will here insert the thread of warnings or bannings should personal attacks continue.

[Logician]

Here is the situation of paid hacks in vb.org:

Some people think that they should be allowed here, some believe otherwise. Even the staff of this site are not in agreement about this issue. I personally believe they are NOT evil and an official vbulletin community should embrace them. It could be vb.org or any other new official site if vb.org is regarded as a free hacking community. But I believe having professional mods in vbulletin world will florish the vbulletin itself since it will offer more possibilities for vb powered sites.

However what I believe is just a personal opinion and irrevelant here. Jelsoft does not like them so their promotion are NOT allowed here since this is a Jelsoft site. They believe people should not use their platform and resources to advertise their paid hacks. This is a stance of the company who ownes vbulletin and this site, so we should all respect their decision.

vb.org administration announced the paid hack policies like this:
* We don't allow them promoted here by its author. Such threads and discussions are deleted.
* We allow their discussions by other members who have no intentions of promoting them, but just discussing them.
* We don't allow paid hacks released in full releases sections.
* We allow "lite" versions of paid hacks released here, provided that they are functional by themselves without forcing people to buy the paid version.

These are the policies that rule at the moment. However they can change in time in either way, if Jelsoft asks us (=vb.org administration) to change them. These rule apply for about a year and we don't get any complaints by Jelsoft so I guess I'm safe to say, for now they agree with these policies.

If you want to discuss this issue, feel free to do it. But please note that such a discussion is NOT likely to change these policies. If this is your intention, you may like to discuss it in vb.com so that Jelsoft can hear your suggestions better.

[MPDev]

Very reasonable, if nothing else the discussion of the topic may highlight to the powers that be that the subject is worth reconsidering.

I will here insert the thread of warnings or bannings should personal attacks continue.

Thank you, that bade man wouldn't leave me alone.

[sabret00the]

if it's honest with everyone i did infact see alot of attacking in this thread, however i also understand that this issue is close to everyones hearts, however whether MPDev released hacks that were related to a paid product other than that of vBulletin are irrelevant, that's getting onto the mentality that you'll only pink diamonds.

in all fairness i read the most valid point in, "would you rather pay $50 an hour or $50 outright due to buying a mod instead of hiring a specialist" that is the problem with service requests, people over-charge and paid mods would reduce that, but at the same time, i really can't see the introduction of paid mods on vb.org not affecting the current releases, vb.org is growing in momentum once more and although we may disagree on some stuff, paid mods/service requests have a role to play in the world of webmastering as lets be honest, running a forum is about being a webmaster, and i'm sorry to piss anyone off but no one releases everything they make.

i would like to have jelsoft set up something so that prices are kept as low as possible, mods cannot turn into products and most importantly to advertise a paid mod you had to a/give a percentage back to jelsoft and b/release X ammount of free mods. but that's my opinion.

to me i love free mods and i love paid ones, i've requested a few paid mods and asked for them to released free, and i've wanted a few kept to myself, i mean look how long i've worked on my confessions script, i'm sure some people think i'm just being selfish but the truth is, i just aint finished it yet despite having a working version, i think villianising paid mods is a bad idea, but without the quality control, price control and so on so forth, promoting it is even worse, theirs very few people who would deserve to have a paid mod released here and the only one that springs to mind is NTLDR and i know i seem like i'm forever mentioning him, but he releases good work and supports it immensely, we seriously need more people here like him and until that's the general attitude before we start trying to introduce new stuff, lets get the existing stuff upto that bench mark.

[Wayne Luke]

Originally Posted by Boofo

The object of the site here is to share coding and learn from one another...

Actually, this site was setup to provide a modification community for vBulletin. The subject of Paid Mods didn't come up until much later. It was never intended to be a point where people could learn how to code from Jelsoft's perspective. If that is the services previous volunteers wanted to provide that was their initiative. In fact, we would prefer that you learn how to program PHP before trying to modify vBulletin and there are much better resources online for that.

However, being human nature, people want the quick fix. The quicker the better. As such different situations need to be reviewed from time to time and changes made from there. That is the case here. The paid modification issue among others is being reviewed among both Jelsoft paid staff and the volunteers at its sites. While, no decision is immediately forthcoming, we are looking at all options ranging from allowing them, to reselling paid add-ons, to charging distributors and programmers listing fees per month or per add-on.

[MPDev]

Thank you, Wayne. I was suprised by that characterization of the site and am glad that my point got through.

[msimplay]

Originally Posted by MPDev

Thank you, Wayne. I was suprised by that characterization of the site and am glad that my point got through.

If people learned their own code then what use of paid hacks
although my stance hasn't changed
i still think the place would be come very very commercial and free hacks would become a thing of the past
at least for vbulletin

[filburt1]

Originally Posted by msimplay

If people learned their own code then what use of paid hacks

People who don't have the time to write very complex hacks. If you knew PHP, why buy vBulletin?

[MPDev]

Even if you know PHP, you may not want to take the time to code it. There is no reason I couldn't code my own import script considering my background with Threads - however, I simply don't have the time or energy to do it.

[sabret00the]

just outta curiosity, mostly at boofo and msimplay; how do you feel about the fact that chen went and made Hivemail and sells it?