Thanks for the offer EQnoble: you live up to your username. We are fortunate not to be a poor community, so raising the cash should not be a problem (we raised the cash for vB4 in a matter of hours). It just sticks in my throat to have to give it to IB.
The more time I spend here, playing around with the forums and the admin demo, the more I'm convinced this is the right software for our board. It would make the decision easier if there was a CMS and blog, but c'est la vie.
I guess what annoys me most about IB's firm refusal to do anything at all for us is that a) it would be no skin off their nose to give us the new security patch in the first instance. b) They can see for themselves the outpouring of grief on our forums for the loss of our highly respected admin. c) Our hosts can confirm that they believe him to have died and have transferred the access details to us. d) We could ask the family for a death certificate, a copy of his will, and a court order transferring ownership, nothing would make the slightest difference. (*) e) They could just be nice and give us a new licence to mirror the old and slam us hard if our old admin is actually on holiday or whatever (we are a 12 year old community, having been with vB since 2004, so it's not like we are fly-by-night).
I remain absolutely convinced we have worked something out with Jelsoft or indeed any reasonable company...
(*) and yet, if we get his partner or family to effectively "hack" his email and give us the details, they'd be happy as Larry...