Sure, but if our hypothetical forum product is virtually bug free and customers are happy with the development direction, and they introduce a product such as Skimlinks in addition to everything else they are doing, that can only be a good thing, surely?
A couple of tricky things with this.
I really think that the options introduced are really good. Anything that helps monetize the community is good for the webmasters. The overall Google adsense integration was really nice for VB, and this paid links thing I also find them as a good thing to be integrated. The problem is, as usual ... execution.
The position in which VB is, is a little tricky. They own a lot of forums, as such, they are direct competition of some people (or they might view them as that), so introducing a feature like Google Adsense, connected to vBulletin, with the potential option of tracking visitors of other forums just smells bad.
Then, the introduction of skimlinks, and keeping a portion of the earnings, well, that is just not right. Seems like they are trying to monetize .. other forums .. for their own gain. Had they wanted to do the proper thing they would've added the option, but certainly do not keep some of the earnings. No matter if the member would make less if they register at the site by themselves, it is just shady.
If they really wanted to do it correctly, they could have negotiated a special deal, and then shared that with the vB customers. "If you register with skimlinks with this promo code you will get a preferential deal" or something of the sort. But instead, it seems pretty much that it is a forced "use this, give us money". That is the FIRST option. If you want something else, go through hurdles. Might be easy for the average Joe, but I just find it abusive and opportunistic. "Hey, let's abuse our market position, we can make money from all the forums that use our product".
Please note I am not implying that was the intention or how it went. This is just my personal feeling about the feature.
Today I was joking with a friend, the conversation went something like "oh, yeah, now Microsoft is going to start getting a commission for every sale made with a PowerPoint presentation". That extreme example is absurd, of course.