Internet Brands claims against XenForo

[Forsaken]

I didnt think of that.
Surely revealing that Kier was paid a bonus is in fact breach of privacy

Most bonuses are made public when you leave a company, and the chance of legal action being able to be taken is unlikely.

It could have been a bonus for resigning for all we know, all they said was that he was paid a bonus.

 

[Chromaniac]

this is pretty disgusting especially if the lawsuit is only a form of threat. considering they are unlikely to have access to source code of XF to really see if there is any copyright violation. things are however totally different if the developers had signed a non-compete agreement while leaving IB. but then, i would not know all the details.

 

[Sagar]

I have worked on many acquisitions. Such bonuses are not unusual practice, it is something if you want to retain a person for x amount of time, you come to a deal that you will pay extra if you assure you will not leave company for agreed days.

Stating this in announcement is foolish

 

[Forsaken]

Also, being paid to -not- compete in a field would be the same as a non-compete.

They waited a year until they released information relating to their product, even if in that time they developed it with intent to sell; it is something they did for over a decade, and no court of law will find them guilty of a contract breach for that situation.

A company tried to do something similar to a co-worker of mine when they left said company and came to work for us, and that was across states. Said co-worker has ~2 decades of experience, and his specialty is large infrastructures and security of such. Case was thrown out within two months, most of which was dickering around by the opposition.

 

[Ruven]

I can agree to your statements here from a purely total business perspective, and yes they are big enough that no single site is of relevance to their operations. However word is getting out via the social networks that IB "suck" over their actions. As stated somewhere else on these forums, sorry can't remember which link, Xen is getting a huge boast and I would imagine IPS will see a surge, just as they got when vB4 alienated a whole bunch of people. End of day one of the worse mistakes in business you can make is getting a competitors name into the public domain, IB have managed to do that.

Oh I totally agree.
Its cockup after cockup for IB im afraid.
But in their eyes one closed thread mentioning how "unethical" the people behind XF are was well worth being able to shut down all the threads/posts praising XF.

Its about control. They want to control the narrative, not the other way around.

Ultimately they only argument i see that they might be able to convincingly make to the court of public opinion (im not a lawyer, so i wont play one on the internet... ok maybe a little), is that the what XenForo became was first started/planned/worked on while Kier/Mike had employment within IB.
So therefore XenForo is fruit from the IB tree, and thus belongs to IB.
That is probably what they are going to try to prove.
One thing that might be an issue is the old leaked screenshots for vB4.
It was clear that Kier was working on something awesome for vB4, something that would truly move forums into the next gen of internet software.
But then it seems that Kiers project got shut down.
And instead of working on that, Kier/vB Team was put to work on basically just reworking vB3 into some half assed compromise between the old and the new.
IB moved forward with the new concept for vB4... and the rest is history. It was a colossal failure for customers, but possibly a big hit financially for the company.

Of course i dont know any of this, its just my assumptions... and we all know where those get you.
Kier has vehemently said that nothing in XenForo was produced while under the employment of IB. I take him at his word, but i also understand that people can have their own definition of nothing and of produced. Bill Clinton had to define to the world what the word IS is.
I make it a habit of not making people out to be more than they are, which is human.
And besides, IF parts of XenForo had been developed/planned/or worked on in any sort of way while these guys were still employed by IB and IB told them to shelve the work... then **** itm use the work as you see fit.
Its your own work right, you didnt steal anyone elses work, so screw whatever perceived ethical lines are being crossed.
Not all things that are illegal are actually "wrong" or unethical.

I support the XF Team and XenForo 100% no matter if any part of IB's claims are true or false.
Not because i think the guys are above reproach, that they are special human beings, that they wouldnt cheat us, that i have "faith" in them, that they are good upstanding gentlemen, that they excel at badminton, or any other touchy feely BS like that.

They put out a good product, have a track record of putting out good product, they dont ignore their users, and they have tangible proof of their skills as displayed by the piece of software in which you are my post right now.

So yeah... the King is dead, long live the King.

 

[Sagar]

Moreover VB itself was in similar situation 10 years back and nothing happened. Matt from Invision mentioned in his blog post that he went through same when he left Ikonboard, and he is surviving and thriving. And both the cases all the parities were based in US even then nothing happened.

So if you look at historical similar cases, don't see much risk except for legal hassle and expenses

 

[v7web]

internet Brands today has commenced a lawsuit in the courts of England and Wales against Xenforo, and its founders, Kier, Mike and Ashley. The lawsuit is about these claims: infringement of our copyrighted intellectual property, breach of contract, and unfair business practices.

The suit is simple: we claim that Kier, Mike, and Ashley have infringed and violated contracts they signed with us to gain unfair business advantage. As such, Xenforo’s software unfairly stands on the shoulders of more than a decade of development by Jelsoft. Internet Brands owns this intellectual property.

In total, we are stunned by the actions of Kier, Mike, and Ashley and believe they must not fully understand the laws of copyrights, contract or business torts. Perhaps Kier and Mike think they have “refactored” enough of the code to skirt copyright law. Our analysis strongly indicates otherwise and we believe anyone skilled in understanding such things will concur. Perhaps they are of the misguided belief that because they created some of the vBulletin code as Jelsoft employees, they somehow have unique claims to that property. If so, that too is wrong. Kier’s and Mike’s work as Jelsoft employees was the exclusive property of their employer, and the former owners of Jelsoft not only paid Kier and Mike well during their employment, Kier was paid a handsome bonus when Internet Brands bought the business, although no such payment was required.

If the proverbial shoe were on the other foot and rather than buying vBulletin, Internet Brands had instructed our engineers to essentially copy the software, we would have been law breakers. But Internet Brands chose to play by copyright rules and bought the vBulletin intellectual property. And, in our opinion, no matter how Kier, Mike, and Ashley try to “spin” their actions, they have not. A key test for infringement is a determination as to whether a substantial portion of the underlying work amounts to an expression of the prior work. We believe we will be able to easily show that Xenforo is infringing under this test. We have numerous other claims against Xenforo that we believe are equally strong.

We trust that software purchasers understand the risks of infringement of copyright law and act accordingly. We have requested that Kier, Mike and Ashley refrain from selling the software while the issues, inclusive of our infringement claims, are heard in the courts. We intend to pursue our rights broadly and vigorously.

We consider Kier and Mike to be talented developers, but ones who potentially fail to grasp the implications of their actions.

We imagine that many of you in the community will have questions or concerns and we want to be as open and straightforward with all of you throughout this process as possible; however, since this matter is now being handled by the court system, we may be limited in some regards to what we can discuss.

Internetbrands

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/show...-claims-against-Xenforo&p=2050616#post2050616

Hey IB,
I take it you didn't really think about this post before you made it? Then again I wouldn't expect anything different from InternetBrands it does appear to be your style.
You have, my friend, in one foul swoop, just about ruined your chances of maybe keeping any of the vBulletin customers that you had left.
For those of you over at IB that maybe didn't know...it is called "ethics" a concept that evades you.
I take it that the days of improving your own product to stay competitive are long gone and now the only option you losers have left is to bully any else that tries to "muscle in" on your turf.
Even if you manage to destroy xenForo (which I very much doubt) I would suspect that most vBulletin users will just go to another forum script after seeing your disgusting behaviour.

p.s
xenForo, I am 100% behind you and will do my utmost to support you by buying a license every time I start a new forum. From now on I will not even be giving the vBulletin website the benefits of my traffic.

I also think that from now on we should not even write the word vBulletin and further help them instead I am going to change it to vBabandonship

 

[Bram]

One thing that might be an issue is the old leaked screenshots for vB4.
It was clear that Kier was working on something awesome for vB4, something that would truly move forums into the next gen of internet software.

Which screenshot Ruven? Would like to see it

 

[infinite.loop]

Do you honestly believe that K, M, & A would go ahead with the sale if what IB said was true?

I say that none of us knows the truth.

I only hope that IB is wrong, and that this lawsuit is over soon. I do want a replacement for my vb installs.

 

[Brent W]

Hey Jarod,
I take it you didn't really think about this post before you made it? Then again I wouldn't expect anything different from InternetBrands it does appear to be your style.
You have, my friend, in one foul swoop, just about ruined your chances of maybe keeping any of the vBulletin customers that you had left.
For those of you over at IB that maybe didn't know...it is called "ethics" a concept that evades you.
I take it that the days of improving your own product to stay competitive are long gone and now the only option you losers have left is to bully any else that tries to "muscle in" on your turf.
Even if you manage to destroy xenForo (which I very much doubt) I would suspect that most vBulletin users will just go to another forum script after seeing your disgusting behaviour.

p.s
xenForo, I am 100% behind you and will do my utmost to support you by buying a license every time I start a new forum. From now on I will not even be giving the vBulletin website the benefits of my traffic.

I also think that from now on we should not even write the word vBulletin and further help them instead I am going to change it to vBabandonship

Wow.... Jarod was quoting the link... he didn't write that.

Is reading on the internet really this hard?

 

[yessir]

I should have put more emphasis on this being the corporate paradigm that THEY operate under.

Right, which I pointed out, was neither here nor there. They are incompetent.

If you have been following vBulletin from its sale to IB all the way to today... this corporate style should already be evident to you.

vB owner for 5 years. I'm very familiar with whats been going on. Again, this has nothing to do with corporate style. This is just incompetence.

Its become about maximizing profits for a quarterly statement regardless of user satisfaction or overall success of a particular product line.

This is known as the agent/principle problem. The employees are not thinking like owners. The incentives are not aligned.

Its about shareholders, stock price, company valuation and making their numbers look good for whatever big corporate whatever that they have planned next.

I want my software providers to be greedy and after money. I don't want a bunch of hippies who are into free love and folk music writing the software my websites depend upon.

The issue is that the employees don't have any skin in the long term health of the company, and so they are inclined to run it into the ground for near term gains which they can leverage into other jobs, or promotions and raises. It is more prevalent in larger businesses, but it isn't due to something nefarious in the business model per se. Likewise, it is very common in government, where politicians and bureaucrats get bigger budgets if they fail, and smaller budgets if they succeed. It's not their money, so they don't care. Similar incentives problem.

Stopping XF discussion at its inception makes them look reactive and shallow, which is what they have become as a company.

They dont want to show who they really are, they want you to think they are something else.

I think you're attributing more personality and motive to this than can probably make sense given that there are dozens of individuals involved.

Its a front, but one corporations that have backed themselves into this type of situation will default to.

As the other gentleman indicated, the PR hit for this stunt will hurt. On the internet, the user is king, regardless whether the software creator is one man or one million. The user has all the clout.

 

[GameR]

Hey, it is good guys!

We do not know abaout the contract. So all what we say is only "Blabla". Kier, Mike and Ashley know what they do and when it is important for us, they want tell us this.

Buy a XenForo license.

 

[Shamil]

Right sale, where are you?

 

[TheBoss]

Smacks of desperation to me...

php is an open source scripting language that is available to all too modify, re-engineer & improve as much as they want to.. thats why its open source.
If any part of vBulletins code is so vital to its running it should be either using ioncube or zend encrytion to protect itself....

Longterm I think Internet Brands may have opened up pandoras box , in as much they have left themselves open to counter lawsuits from Invision Power Board & FusionBB , the later being the one they are so desperate to copy to have its inbuilt functionality and stability...

I think it also proves to present vB4 owners just how worried they are of the potential loss of a rather large portion of their client base , mainly due to their OWN shortcomings in being unable to produce a stable forum script...

Regards..

 

[Jethro]

Oh I totally agree.
Its cockup after cockup for IB im afraid.
But in their eyes one closed thread mentioning how "unethical" the people behind XF are was well worth being able to shut down all the threads/posts praising XF.

Interestingly over at IPS Charles has taken the opportunity to stop Xen discussions there as well apparently.

 

[v7web]

The best thing we can all do for xenForo is to make a positive post somewhere on the web for this great new forum script. Then maybe make a negative post for vBabandonship.

This will give xenForo a few thousand positive backlinks and go some way to helping them fight this.
I have already done this.

vBabandonship want to copyright a programming language!!

 

[Ruven]

Right, which I pointed out, was neither here nor there. They are incompetent.


vB owner for 5 years. I'm very familiar with whats been going on. Again, this has nothing to do with corporate style. This is just incompetence.


This is known as the agent/principle problem. The employees are not thinking like owners. The incentives are not aligned.


I want my software providers to be greedy and after money. I don't want a bunch of hippies who are into free love and folk music writing the software my websites depend upon.

The issue is that the employees don't have any skin in the long term health of the company, and so they are inclined to run it into the ground for near term gains which they can leverage into other jobs, or promotions and raises. It is more prevalent in larger businesses, but it isn't due to something nefarious in the business model per se. Likewise, it is very common in government, where politicians and bureaucrats get bigger budgets if they fail, and smaller budgets if they succeed. It's not their money, so they don't care. Similar incentives problem.


I think you're attributing more personality and motive to this than can probably make sense given that there are dozens of individuals involved.


As the other gentleman indicated, the PR hit for this stunt will hurt. On the internet, the user is king, regardless whether the software creator is one man or one million. The user has all the clout.

Im not sure what you are disagreeing with, why are we having a word game?
Im saying that THEIR corporate style is whats wrong.
You are saying that its their incompetence that is whats wrong.
But their corporate style is what IS incompetent.
Their incompetence has been on display throughout their ownership of vB, and every time that incompetence rears its ugly head its due to THEIR specific corporate way of doing business.
That is why they will find it very difficult to change course or to act differently. You are who you are, and according to the US supreme court corporations have feelings too and are personalities in their own right.

Who is talking about hippies and free love?
And why does it have to the employess who are the incompetent ones?
Why cant it be the corporation as a whole as its organized and directed?
In a large company the will of the employee means even less.
Im sure Kier and Mike wanted to press on with their concept of vB4, even if it meant another extra 6 months of development.
vB4 did not suck because of employee incompetence, its sucked because of corporate decisions that came from the very top of the food chain.
The product was rushed to completion, the better more forward thinking options were tossed aside in favor of the more easy to produce but already dated options, and it was not tested throughly enough before sold to consumers.
Thats not the fault of the programmers and other employees of vB... its the fault of the corporation who demanded it be so.

 

[Ruven]

Which screenshot Ruven? Would like to see it

They were eventually uploaded onto Kiers blog at vb.
You can find them there, its one of the last things that Kier posted in his vb blog.
Those screen shots are what made me buy vB4.
Damn You Kier!

Eh... better late than never

 

[CFodder]

I say that none of us knows the truth.

Hey, it is good guys!

We do not know abaout the contract. So all what we say is only "Blabla". Kier, Mike and Ashley know what they do and when it is important for us, they want tell us this.

Buy a XenForo license.

Agree with both of you, we don't know any details either of the contracts or the action being taken by IB, a lot of this thread is just pure conjecture with regards to them.

Whatever anyone says it's gonna be an interesting few months.

 

[buro9]

Yeah, announcing that a day before sales start is definitely an awful behavior.

I dunno.

I hadn't heard about Xenforo until IB's announcement email arrived.

And now I'm looking at it and I see that Xenforo uses jQuery rather than YUI, has AJAX everywhere it should be, uses TinyMCE rather than a custom bbcode editor, has HTML5, has slightly different PHP requirements... First glance views as a chartered IT professional with over 15 years experience is that Xenforo is a totally different code base.

We know that look and feel isn't copyrightable as any degree of difference is difference enough. And we can see that the codebase is clearly different.

So what IB has achieved after a period of pissing their customers off with poor quality, is to promote to their disenfranchised customer base the existence of a competitor that delivers what we've been waiting for.

Further, IB seems to be operating under the tactics of aggression that behoves the actions of a US company, they don't appear to be recognising UK and EU law.

My personal view at this point (and IANAL) is that unless IB have a contract stipulating non-competitive behaviour for a defined time period that has not yet expired, then they're opening a can of worms as they will lose and have just given Xenforo significant promotion.

IBs hope probably stems from financial muscle, in being able to bully Xenforo by raising the spectre of potential financial ruin.

Enough people are so pissed at IB though, and still have goodwill towards Kier, that I can imagine that if Xenforo needs funds to fight IB they could sell virtual site badges (literally... a .gif) for $100 a time and people would buy them. If ownership of said badges later earns a discount on any product produced by Xenforo then even better.

tl;dr. IB appear to not have a leg to stand on, and bullying I would say is a tactic unlikely to succeed, and IB have just given Xenforo promotion that Xenforo probably could never have afforded.