I feel sorry for the Vbulletin brand.

Since vbulletin 4.0 i have always experienced a cold company i want your money experience.

While developers need money they need to listen to the community. They release 4.0 and think oooh well the community will iron out the bugs. So wrong
 
jonsidneyb said:
I don't feel sorry for IB :p
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Same here, once was a member at a very thriving tech site, running on vB as well, site owners sold to one of those internet marketing outfits and within six weeks they had completely bollocked up the community. When will the people with the cash learn to invest in the actual community and not some snake oil salesperson. Sorry this always slightly angers me, as someone has already stated elsewhere on this site it's like the Borg on crack.
 
dutchbb said:
vB4 is only powerful in features. Not in UI, stability, security and support.
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I couldn't have said it better myself. At one time, I would have happily recommended anybody and everybody to use vBulletin because of the wealth of features and - at the time- what I considered to be a super administration system. While vB still stands head and shoulders above most of the competition where number of features is concerned, I still can't help but think of most of those features as pure, unnecessary bloat that might only benefit a small percentage of customers.

XF, so far, has wowed me with: features, UI, stability; I haven't had need for support yet but I'm sure that'll be awesome, too. ;)
 
dutchbb said:
I think it's like this: vB Solutions/IB doesn't allow the use of 'vbulletin' in a domain name unless it's officially approved by them. So vbulletin.org can only exist under approval of the owners of vbulletin.com. vbulletin.org has no form of income, so financially they also depend on their big brother (hosting costs). Other than that, the administrator does not get paid (his own words) and thus the site seems to have some level of independency.
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Sorry if this is off topic, but let me explain a bit - as you are pretty close.

Jelsoft owned the vb.org domain when IB bought them, so now IB own it. The site is hosted on the IB server. We actually have four administrators, including Marco, who is the only one employed by IB which kinda makes him the boss. None of the other three (me included) is paid. AFAIK, Marco is not paid for his time on the site.

We are as independant as we can be. Obviously, at the end of the day, IB can order us to do something (or not do something). Thus far this has not happened. We have, on occasions, complied with polite requests. The site runs quite happily on 3.6.12, and thus there is no compelling reason to upgrade just for the sake of it. That said, 3.6 is old, and a move to 3.8 is possible. There are no current plans to move to 4.x - the work involved would be prohibative for volunteers. We have over 130 plugins and over 80 custom templates, plus several custom files and a custom system for style choice. The software version is secondary to the sites main function.

Finally, just to get back on topic. Dont feel sorry for IB or vbulletin, Im 100% sure they were well aware of what the reaction would be, everyone else could have predicted it, so Im sure they could. ;)
 
I was about to upgrade to Vb4 (in a few days) when I found out about Xenforo on webmasterworld.com. I won't upgrade now. I want to be part of the xenforo experience for years to come. :)

10 years from now I can say on this board, "Kid, what are you talking about? I was amongst the first 3000 members of Xenforo! Show some respect!" LOL.
 
Paul M said:
Sorry if this is off topic, but let me explain a bit - as you are pretty close.
Finally, just to get back on topic. Dont feel sorry for IB or vbulletin, Im 100% sure they were well aware of what the reaction would be, everyone else could have predicted it, so Im sure they could. ;)
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So are you saying IB's primary goal is to destroy vBulletin? - they are certainly making a good job of doing so. I was going to say I feel sorry for vB owners but then a lot of them I talk to are on the move to either Xen or IPB, so there's a light at the end of a particularly dark tunnel.
 
I feel VERY VERY sorry. They were lucky to get ready made lemonade, but they got an idea and converted it back to lemon ;)
 
I feel sorry some what for VB as a brand, and especially many of its employee's who are wearing the brunt of something way above them at IB headquarters.
 
Rob said:
The fault isn't with the founders - they sold it partly because they had need to and partly because they believed the product would be well cared for - the fact it wasn't isn't their fault.
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Wrong. They could've let Kier or someone else take control. They were greedy and wanted to cash out of vB.

James is somewhere enjoying his life for the next few decades!
 
I thank founder of VB for selling it off to IB. Else XF would have never born. Kier would have propoably improved VB much better, but I doubt it would have been anything like XF. Everything happens for a reason, so I am glad it was sold, and I am glad IB is messing it up :D

FreshFroot said:
Wrong. They could've let Kier or someone else take control. They were greedy and wanted to cash out of vB.

James is somewhere enjoying his life for the next few decades!
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Sagar said:
I thank founder of VB for selling it off to IB. Else XF would have never born. Kier would have propoably improved VB much better, but I doubt it would have been anything like XF. Everything happens for a reason, so I am glad it was sold, and I am glad IB is messing it up :D
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I doubt that.. if Kier had total control at vB before IB came into the picture. I think vB4 would've been what XF 1.0 will be.

He just never got the chance and had to find other means. I don't blame the guy, I been there in that situation before. Where you know you can do something amazing, but need support and resources. However, you don't get any backup support or resources. And, that just destroys your plans inside.
 
I feel sorry for all the customers who felt obliged to buy vB4 in that dreadful pre-sale - buy without seeing at an astronomical cost. I recall feeling as if a gun was being put to our heads. For the first time (I became a customer in 2004) I didn't buy ... I decided it was time to move away. It was a tough decision, but I knew I didn't trust the company.

Over a number of years I'd trusted Jelsoft. They appeared decent, honest and fair. The product was good and I never for a moment thought I would cease to support them. The shock of the takeover was huge and I recall writing on the company forums at that point that I was concerned. The writing was pretty much on the wall because of the nature of IB as I read it at the time. However, nothing prepared me for that 4.0 pre-sale. Truly shocking.

It was obvious that many people would spend a fortune on 4.0 because the alternatives seemed so sparse. It was awful to watch people cave in ... hoping, believing, wishing ....! If there's one thing I hate, it's the cynical exploitation of people.

I don't feel sorry for vB as it is now ... it's not Jelsoft and I have no reason to feel sorry for some corporation who aggressively buy companies and wring them out of their own personality to please their shareholders. I was, and still am to a degree, sorry that James sold Jelsoft - the impact has been huge with many people losing a lot of money. Having said that, we now have something new and fresh - so something excellent has grown out of this and as far as I'm concerned we have a company I can trust again!
 
Yer, from memory I believe Kier always stated something along the lines that 4.x needed to be built from the ground up... and not the way they have gone about things.
 
Paul:

Who owns the content / database on vBorg?

If the boss Marco and the other 3 admins under him decide that the best interest for the site might be XenForo or IPB or a more generic (support for all forum products) direction is the best path to move to, ditching the domain and moving to a new host should be sufficient. Marco can move the site over to you for example and step down avoiding non-compete (if he even has that clause in his employer contract)

If vBorg is dying and version 3.6 runs fine. And it can do so much better reaching a bigger audience. Why not go independent? It's an option right?

Let's say it is .. who owns the content/database - is that Marco the owner of the site, or IB the owner of the IP, which includes vBorg?

I never thought about this, and have no opinion about it - besides that I think vBorg could be more like AdminExtra, etc. where it's a generic resource site. You guys could consider moving from under the IB umbrella to avoid further damage to reputation and popularity.
 
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