Falacies and Such from Experience

[papabear99]

Folks,

I figured the best place for this post was here and if the Admins feel it needs to be elsewhere then they will make it so ....I needed to give some input on all the stuff surrounding the new license and such for vBull.

We started running a Forum system at Electric Scotland back in the O'Reilley Webboard days (aboot 13 or so years back) . We stuck with that system thru many years (thru a few sellouts as well). When they sold out the price got to be totally outrageous...The last time we renewed our contract with Chatspace it was $3,500.00 US per year for a support contract. We looked for a different alternative then...

We then went with Gossamer Forums since they had a great product that fit our needs...We remained with them for some time (and still have an active license with them which we use to run a system for a customer) but it did NOT fulfill our needs. We searched around and looked at some of the FREE products and decided on vBulletin (even though we needed to purchase it) and it has been great...

The license change is NP for us since it just makes sense...At the end of the day it should make sense to many others...If vBull has no MAJOR updates for 2 or 3 years then the license you purchase remains good since it covers ALL 4.x releases....Instead of an annual contract you pay once and all is well...In past experience the payment will be good for at least 2 years for a major version and that saves money....

I cannot understand why folks are saying on the boards they are NOT gonna write for 4.x just because of this license change....In my opinion this actually makes things a bit more stable AND saves folks some money....I hate to lose some of the Mods that are being said will not be ported to 4.x BUT we are moving the system here to 4.x because it is a good advancement for vBull and it takes the next step to what vBull needs to be...

Some of the folks need to take a closer look at their reactions to the licensing and give it more thought BEFORE they start running off....One should research before reacting...That saves problems later...

Just a few thoughts from Papa Bear I wished to express...

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Warning to those who may reply: Please keep your replies limited to discussing vBulletin.org and the effects on modifications and styles released. Rants about the license or price change will not be allowed.

Personally i think that it would not be that bad. Many people rant and say they will leave now, but often in due time most won't. Also we have had occasions where coders or designers left in the past. But coders/designer come and go over time as their interests or personal life changes. Some go and others come that has and will always be the case.

[KevinL]

I just think it would be hard from a coders standpoint if throughout the entire 4.x series the code is getting refactored. It sounds like more of a hassle then anything else really.

If between 4.1 --> 4.2 a good chunk of code changes how many coders here will want to keep developing the same mods over and over and over to work with the new code base?

This is the part that I am not getting...if someone upgraded now, with their old 3.x license they are kinda screwed because of the heavy code changes throughout the series....they HAVE to upgrade. If you paid for the upgrade now you could potentially have to upgrade your board every few months with new code there by loosing most of your mods and maybe even having to change code within your themes.

It really doesn't sound like a good option at all especially for the coders here that would have to keep up on each refactor of code that VB puts out. They are better off just waiting till the whole thing is rewritten and start writing their mods. Which is what should have happened anyways....

It seems like the best option is just to wait till VB5....