"Commercial Hacks" forum?

[bigmattyh]

I think the commercial hacks forum is probably going to have a negative effect on the availability of free hacks.

I am a huge believer in the free market; however, I think that to provide a forum here in which hackers have the opportunity to sell their hacks will be a huge detriment to this community. But further, it is wrong to allow them to reap the benefits of vb.org without having them invest in it.

If hackers want to charge, LET THEM PAY FOR THE SITE TO DO SO. Let them come up with their own site to hock their wares. Let them invest the time and energy to catalog them and market them. If they have a free, open forum like this to take advantage of, they will be essentially using vb.org to support their business, without any kind of payment in return.

Leave it to them. The true official hack site of vBulletin should not be subsidizing the hack-for-hire market.

[Xanthine]

Originally posted by Harvey
could a commercial forum have the effekt, that most people will try to sell hacks and only few people put it into "general hacks" for free?

Thats what i was thinking.

Originally posted by bigmattyh
I think the commercial hacks forum is probably going to have a negative effect on the availability of free hacks.

Same opinion.

Firefly is right though, I have my advertisement so they should be able to have theirs.

[TECK]

my personal oppinion is to don't start a comercial forum. people who want to make money of it, should not use the vB.org's popularity or it's traffic to make money. period.

that's my thought. thanks for reading this post.

[bigmattyh]

Just an addendum to clarify my previous post:

I think hackers should have the freedom to charge for their hacks -- although Jelsoft could prevent this (the hacks are derivitave works, made from Jelsoft's intellectual property).

However, if a hacker wants to sell his hacks, he should have to shoulder the full cost of promoting/selling/offering support for them -- and not use this forum as his place of business. Otherwise, the nature of things would lead to more pay-hacks and fewer shared hacks. That said, it would be reasonable to allow hackers to link to their commercial work in their sigs, so long as it doesn't get out of control.

[MarkB]

In that case, should posts about commercial hacks be removed altogether?

[bigmattyh]

I believe it would be fair to allow hackers to post an announcement in a specified forum. The point is not to allow the forum to become a support forum for commercial hacks.

[Sparkz]

IMO, yes.

Putting a link to your website saying 'See more hacks here' in your sig would be OK, as long as it is not overdone...

[Freddie Bingham]

Thumbs down to this idea.

[samtha25]

Originally posted by freddie
Thumbs down to this idea.

Couldn't agree more. vb.org will devolve even further into a site for selling hacks. If that's what people want, fine, but I don't think it was the intention. Open a classified ads forum and let people who hack for food, post the availability of their services if you must.