DragonByte Tech add-ons not coming to XF anytime soon

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Like I said earlier, now is the time to create that killer addon. If you release some lackluster addon that fails, you only will have yourselves to blame and you will kick yourselves having to support it.



This direct line with IB certainly did not occur over night. The sooner you get in the XF game, the sooner you will have a voice of reason. You cant expect to parachute into the XF world and start calling the shots.



Dont think about it too long. The longer you wait, the harder it will be. You guys should start off on something small to get a good understanding of the XF framework before jumping into something bigger.

=) I know it didn't occur overnight, I went out of my way in my post to make it as clear as possible I wasn't saying we expected to have any sort of close relationship with KAM. I said "i'm not saying KAM don't do enough, i'm not saying we should be getting special treatment, i'm not saying ANYTHING, i'm just making a statement of fact - as things stand at vB we have good lines of communication with the dev team of vB5. We haven't built anything like that up with KAM, that's not an xf "flaw""

I had kinda hoped saying that would mean people wouldn't interpret it as us expecting to parachute in and call the shots - let me make it as clear as I possibly can here for everyone: I was, in no way shape or form, suggesting we SHOULD have the same relationship with KAM that we do with the vB Team. I was simply stating that we DO have that relationship with the vB Team and that it factors into our decision to develop for vB5 for instance. I was making absolutely no suggestion or inference that us not having that relationship with KAM was anyones "fault" was something someone should "rectify" or is a factor at all. I can't stress that enough.

Regarding your last post - we've actually already released a few small mods for xF in the past :) We have a reasonable understanding of the framework - we were here on Day One, with a few licenses purchased to support KAM in the face of the lawsuit.
 
It's a point of principle with us that we release Lite versions with 70%+ the features of the pro versions for people who can't afford the pro versions or who want to properly demo the product before purchasing.


That is very nice of you to release free lite versions of your addons. I released a couple of free addons at VB.org and as such, supported is limited to bugs only. If people want support and additional enhancements, they should pay for the premium version of the addon.
 
A few reasons it's a major part of the decision:

Firstly the coders really don't like doing support in hostile environments. It wears them down and if they have the choice of not walking into that environment they'll generally choose not to. It's harder for me to convince the guys bringing their work to xF is a good idea if they think they're going to have to deal with... difficult people when they do.

Secondly the market share of xF is still really small - its growing but compared to vB or IPB it's still tiny. To get xF to be profitable would basically mean being able to have a receptive market to the pricing structures required to maintain profitability. As the market exists just now there are lots of cheap mods and cheap/free branding free initiatives. That's fine for someone doing it as a hobby, but the truth is those people and their work won't be around long, because they're simply not making enough money to make this a full time job. What that means is for profitability to be possible the market has to be "conditioned" to realise that a certain price level is required to get professional work that will be supported and updated long term without people vanishing into the night.

That conditioning is really hard to do when there is an extremely vocal minority trying to push resistance to it. Those guys don't care if they don't get good coders here long term making enough money to live on - they just want stuff as cheap as possible for them, with the copyright layout THEY want and they'll do or say whatever they have to in order to keep the market prices at a low level for THEM, regardless of the damage long-term.

Thirdly, xenForo will be unprofitable for us in the short term for sure, probably in the medium term and very possibly in the long term. The truth is that dealing with difficult people saps motivation and takes it out of you - no matter how used to it you are. Getting up every day and releasing things to people that they will use on their sites, often for free, then come to you and try to make your life difficult is hard to do when you know you're LOSING money on it. Doing it for people who are appreciative, friendly and understanding is a LOT easier.

The truth is that we don't have to deal with any of that stuff in the vB community any more. It's very VERY rare for us to get a negative comment or post either on our site of on vbulletin.org anymore. We've had more on xenforo.com in the last year than we have on our site and vbulletin.org combined. That's despite vBulletin having a community dozens of times larger than xenForo's. That's just crazy - pure numbers should mean there are more people on vBulletin giving us crap, yet not only are there more on xF as a percentage, but there are more as a whole number as well.

TL;DR When you're trying to grow a market, vocal resistance makes it several times more difficult than it has to be. When there's no guarantee of profitability in that market it becomes a serious consideration.


Unprofitable, I can understand that. But there are "difficult" people in every work environment ever to be created on this earth. Why? Because people will never agree on the same thing ever, for the rest of our tiny existence on this planet.

I find that excuse really lame and only pushed onto our screens as a way to justify your excuse to not wanting to port your add-on's to xF.
 
It wasn't discontinued due to lack of demand - it was discontinued because we couldn't verify that licensing work for various pieces of content had been handled properly by the people who should have done it. We discontinued it to protect ourselves legally. Support was still provided for it and bugfixes were still made - still are to this day if anyone reported any.
Licensing sure didn't seem to come into play when somebody made the conscious decision to clone the bespoke code in v3 Arcade for remote game installations, to post instructions to DBT customers on how to fool the v3A system to post games to something other than v3A, and to allow a DBT project to download games from the v3A support site totally bypassing the agreements that v3A, not DBT, had in place with the game authors to host & distribute those games.
 
Unprofitable, I can understand that. But there are "difficult" people in every work environment ever to be created on this earth. Why? Because people will never agree on the same thing ever, for the rest of our tiny existence on this planet.

I find that excuse really lame and only pushed onto our screens as a way to justify your excuse to not wanting to port your add-on's to xF.

What need would I have for an excuse? There's a ton of evidence I could present that it's just not profitable to develop add-ons for xenForo at this point. It's almost impossible to make a decent wage from it, and it's certainly not possible to make as much from it as it is from vBulletin. Why would I not just say that?

There's literally no reason for me to bring the community attitude into it, and spend time explaining in detail exactly how the community attitude factors into our decision and affects our judgement of the long-term profitability of the platform if it wasn't true. What gain is there for us making up that "excuse"?

The only response that was going to get from most people is a defensive and negative one. There's literally nothing for us to gain from inventing that as an excuse. The sole reason that make sense for me to have said that, is that it's the honest truth. :P
 
Licensing sure didn't seem to come into play when somebody made the conscious decision to clone the bespoke code in v3 Arcade for remote game installations, to post instructions to DBT customers on how to fool the v3A system to post games to something other than v3A, and to allow a DBT project to download games from the v3A support site totally bypassing the agreements that v3A, not DBT, had in place with the game authors to host & distribute those games.

If you can show me any evidence of copy/pasted code in vBArcade I would like to see it. I've heard that accusation before and yet no one has ever been able to produce this alleged copied code, despite the mod being completely unencoded. The v3 Arcade import service was only available to people who had a v3 arcade account and access to those games.

There were v3 arcade users who preferred our platform and wanted to switch and we provided the ability for them to do so, no more no less. We didn't distribute those games, we didn't take them from the v3Arcade site. The only people who had access to them were people the v3Arcade site GAVE access to. The v3 Arcade site was still distributing the games, not DragonByte Technologies. We simply provided the means to import the games those people already had access to onto our platform.

The "problem" it seemed to me was that the v3 arcade people didn't like that people preferred using our arcade to play the games than theirs. They didn't like the competition - and that's fine, competition makes business harder for them, but it doesn't mean we done something wrong by PROVIDING that competition.

No game author ever requested we remove access to their games - if they had we would have done so.

Regardless this isn't the time or the place to discuss this (though thank you for entering a completely unrelated thread to randomly attack us on a completely unrelated subject, it's a rather useful demonstration of the hostility mentioned). If you want to continue the discussion i'd be happy to do so in a private message conversation with you :)
 
As someone who doesn't come from the vB world, I have never heard of DragonByteTech, and have zero interest in their mods.

It would appear that they have very eloquently outlined why they are not prepared to be involved in this community right now.

But it does strike me as odd that such a lot of time is being spent on discussing this, for a company that sees no value for themselves in this community.

Perhaps it's time to move on now. They've made it clear they don't want to play with us, time to accept that and let them go their merry way.
 
But it does strike me as odd that such a lot of time is being spent on discussing this, for a company that sees no value for themselves in this community.
If he's still posting. He's thinking about it. :D
 
LOL why do you care?

Would you want to deal with a company that sees no value in you or your community?

I know I never would.


End of story.
I want a shop!!!
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I want a shop!!!


Then get together a possie, and round up a decent developer that can be trusted (has proven this over the three years XF has been around) And get some crowdfunding together.

Trying to persuade a disinterested party just smacks of desperation to me.
 
LOL why do you care?

Would you want to deal with a company that sees no value in you or your community?

I know I never would.


End of story.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that we "see no value in you or your community" When i've made it very clear, several times, that we think the developers, staff and majority of the community are great, and that we have several former customers and friends over here who are xenForo users. I guess people see what they want to see.
 
If you can show me any evidence of copy/pasted code in vBArcade I would like to see it. I've heard that accusation before and yet no one has ever been able to produce this alleged copied code, despite the mod being completely unencoded. The v3 Arcade import service was only available to people who had a v3 arcade account and access to those games. There were v3 arcade users who preferred our platform and wanted to switch and we provided the ability for them to do so, no more no less. No game author ever requested we remove access to their games - if they had we would have done so.
Those "accusations" might exist because the first version of DBT project looked so much like v3A's design that your own customers asked if it was a modified copy of v3A. Past that though the "v3 Arcade import service" service should never have existed because the agreement v3A, not DBT, had with those game authors was to allow v3A to host them by v3A to be used with v3A. It is pretty simple... DBT had no right to copy the v3A functionality for the remote installation of files hosted by v3A with agreements in place by v3A. And how could a game author request you to remove access to their games when you weren't hosting them, v3A was and you were just leeching off of the v3A server?

Regardless this isn't the time or the place to discuss this (though thank you for entering a completely unrelated thread to randomly attack us on a completely unrelated subject, it's a rather useful demonstration of the hostility mentioned). If you want to continue the discussion i'd be happy to do so in a private message conversation with you :)
Sure, send me a PC with a copy of the request that DBT made to v3A to allow a non-v3A product to connect to & download those files from v3A using code to mimic the bespoke function in v3A. The last time I requested a copy of that communications I was ignored.
 
Then get together a possie, and round up a decent developer that can be trusted (has proven this over the three years XF has been around) And get some crowdfunding together.

Trying to persuade a disinterested party just smacks of desperation to me.
Desperation is what I do. I'm a Desperado.

desperado.jpg
 
I'm not sure where you got the idea that we "see no value in you or your community" When i've made it very clear, several times, that we think the developers, staff and majority of the community are great, and that we have several former customers and friends over here who are xenForo users. I guess people see what they want to see.


LOL I have no vested interest one way or another, as I said I have never heard of your company... nor do I care about it, or your mods.

You stated several times quite catagorically that there is no profit (ie VALUE) to be had here right now.

Your words, not mine.
 
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