Offsite hack development...

[Borgs8472]

To vb.org and coders.

Continuing a topic I started at vb.com, are you allowed to take people's hacks here and develop them off site publically?

The reason being is that the administration of my board has decided that a limited about of technical people reviewing and installing hacks is no longer the way to go, and that hacks should be presented for public review consultation and development.

Bullshit.

You can't just take people's hacks from vb.org and develop them offsite as a rule, even if you did, I would assume it would be only with explicit permission of the hack author.

Also developing larger hacks may mean posting large chunks of core vb code, up to a whole php file which would of course break the licence agreement.

Obviously this is the open source way of doing things, which has many good points I realise. But vb is not open source, how can I persuade them to stop this?

[KW802]

Borgs8472,

You said it yourself... it would require the author's permission. Just because the hacks released here on vB.org are viewable source it certainly doesn't make them open source.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Most author's have a copyright notice somewhere in their hacks. I know that most of my hacks would not allow this.

[Logikos]

I run a vBulletin Hacking site myself and one MAIN rule is that.

Copyrighted Material
vbhackers.com users agree not to post any material that is protected by copyright, trademark or other proprietary right without the express permission of the owner(s) of said copyright, trademark or other proprietary right. This includes all Hacks and Templates releases. You will be banned!

So baslicly, you are not allowed to release other peoples work, unless of course you have there written permission. Though, you should note. Its okay to download someone else hacks, modify them yourselfs for your own board; as long as you don't re-release your modified version. Thats where addon releases come into play.

[harmor19]

vbhackers.com is your site?
I went there about a couple months ago but wasn't sure it was legit or what not.
I may share my hacks there when I get time.

[Logikos]

As long as there your own hacks then your more then welcome too.

[Paul M]

All my hacks clearly state ;

This hack may not be copied, reproduced or published elswhere without my permission.

What site is this.

(btw, how can you be kicked off your own board ??)

[Borgs8472]

Originally Posted by Paul M

(btw, how can you be kicked off your own board ??)

Long story, not nice at all.

Anyhow, it's the principle they've implemented which was an excuse to not let me do anything by myself, but the principle is flawed is my point.

Obviously if anything DOES get reproduced etc I'll say, but nothing's happened as of yet.

[baronvonwalz]

I'll tell you a story, and a grand story it is:

Wordforge.net is opened in 2003, on an Austrian server, and it is run by a good administrator, named Cassandra. A year and a half passes, and she decides she's going to go tour the world. So she hands over the board to Borgs8472, this is fall of 2004. Borgs8472 puts the server on a most shitty server, with constant timeouts, and I offer my services to help with the database migration, after which I am promoted to Technical Admin, this is Winter of 2005. Shortly thereafter I quit, fed up with his mismanagement, only to return Fall of 2005.

It is at this point that the rest of the staff gets most agitated, not because of my return, but because some of the things Borgs is doing, or has been doing. Another administrator, along with support from most of the staff and the board, volunteers to buy the board and take over, with the requirement that Borgs8472 gets to stay on as Technical Administrator, and all hacks that he installs be approved by the owner.

Four months pass, and Borgs8472 does not abide by his agreement with the new owner, culminating in a point where our database is down (my fault), that borgs8472 decides it would be a good idea to put up a link to his new board, a board for the discussion of torrents. Needless to say, when we get our hosts to fix our database problem, they see this link to Borgs8472's new board and get very concerned, if I were a webhost I'd be concerned too.

The owner is nearly fed up with Borgs8472, having gone against his wishes time and time again, and then finally fires Borgs8472 two weeks ago, after finally losing his patience.

Since then, Borgs here has been on a vendetta against the board.

But back to the part about copyright violations.

Our community oriented plan only involves access to the vbulletin source code of me and our other new Technical Administrator, no one else has access to it. In addition, we aren't taking other people's work and passing it off as our own, and we don't intend to. We might be taking other people's code and modifying it to our needs, but that's hardly illegal or wrong.

The basic of the plan is to have the community have more say in the various hacks and tinkering that gets installed on the board, rather than the old system, which was, "Borgs8472 installs something, people like it, or don't, if not too bad".

If you need any further proof that Borgs intentions are insincere, just realize that he is coming to you about copyright violations, something he cares nothing for given the fact that he has a board (www.torrentforge.com) dedicated to the discussion of the acquisition of illegal material.

Our board link is wordforge.net, if you have any further concerns just contact me by PM or visit.

[Elwood Blues]

Hello, esteemed members. First of all, I would like to say that I'm the license owner of the board in question. We won't hide any of our efforts from your review.

The board itself can be found here. The project's inspriration and execution can be found here.

I sincerely regret that this has come to your attention. My former staff member is either trying to sully our tiny community's name or he has completely missed the point of the whole exercise.

If you have concerns, I'll try to answer them in this post.

Concern One: vBulletin is not open source so we cannot modify it.

True - vBulletin is NOT licensed as open source, but no one has ever claimed it is. Its source code is licensed to US. Does that mean we cannot modify it - NO. Under the license terms we are free to modify any and all source code supplied by vBulletin, although we do so at our own risk, and modifications will not be supported by Jelsoft.

Concern Two: If we alter the vBulletin source code we cannot publish it.

Worng-ish. Any modifications to the source are ours. We can publish our modification. We are, of course, prohibited from publishing the code around the modification - it is not ours to distribute. If I make a change to five lines of PHP, then I can publish those five lines. If I make a change to a single character within a line of PHP, I can publish the line. It all comes down to common sense. When publishing code a 'fair' proportion of it has to be ours.

Concern Three: W3:CP is all about hacking vBulletin source.

Wrong. A fair proportion of the project will be about looking at vBulletin hacks, additions and plugins, but we are also actively looking at all options. If a particular feature is best served by writing our own Java applet, then so be it - such an application would have NO reliance on vBulletin code whatsoever, such is the case with the current IRC client on the board.

Concern Four: Open Source Software is free of charge - and therefore worthless.

Wrong. Open source software (when licensed as such) is 'free' as in speech, and for the most part, free as in beer. You can charge for open source software if you like - and you can charge for support of the software. The governing principle behind the open source movement is that the source code can be REDISTRIBUTED with modifications.

Concern Five: On staff can modify the vBulletin code.

True. We can modify it as much as we like - but we cannot open it up as a free for all whereby all board members can look at the code and change it - that would be tantamount to 'distribution'. So, how do we allow others to work on the code? The plain and simple truth is that, when it comes to vBulletin hacks - we don't. However, that does not stop ANYONE writing PHP and submitting it to us for testing and integration into the vBulletin code. Which was always the plan.

Concern Six: You can't test vBulletin code without another vBulletin license.

Wrong. You can create a new board that is password protected and available to staff only. A publicly available, complete installation of vBulletin would require a new license - obviously. Single pages testing new functionality can be made available to the general public - as part of the main board. There is nothing in the license that prohibits us from testing a full board privately or individual hacks / pages publicly (and safely).

If you have a valid license, you may set up an additional test forum in order to test code, template and database modifications. To make this clear to us and our license verification procedures, place it in a directory called 'testvb' and be sure to password protect it. It must not be accessible by the general public.

Now, regardless of the fact that a huge percentage of all End User License Agreements are un-enforceable, there is an imperative to act in accordance with the spirit, if not the letter of the agreement. Again, it is all about common sense - if it feels wrong, it probably is wrong. Publishing a vB template for all to see would be wrong. Publish three modified lines, just fine.

Here is the EULA - http://www.vbulletin.com/order/license_agreement.php

In closing, I would like to say again that I'm very sorry that this was brought up, not because we've done anything wrong or because we have something to hide. But because it's a non-issue and the thread starter is a disgruntled ex-staff member who's doing his best to get me into trouble.

Thank you for your time and consideration.