I don't think staff don't care... because I have had nothing but friendly and professional from them. Upper management is different... staff are just employee's and do as they're told... anyone in a management position may have something to answer for.
I also agree that the product will one day be fast again... but from what I've seen with the releases so far, I think 4.0.9 now, that's not on the cards. With 4.x only being a partial rewrite to 5.x, that means I don't see any of the performance issues really being fixed, because they're created at substantial core levels, primarily the CMS product. As they continue to refactor the existing 3.x forum code, its getting slower as well, as with the blog. This says they don't have the experience needed to possibly produce what is needed to compete at this time, and/or, the code is merely so outdated they needed to start from the ground up using newer technologies.
VB is not going anywhere any time soon... its too big for that.
XF, IMHO... will become the new VB in the future provided XF always maintain that level of customer openness, communication and quality product build, and doesn't get to where VB got... being the rebuild kept being put off and management chose to refactor vs. rebuild, or other silly decisions. All XF have to do is keep building a quality product/s and remain customer focused and integrate with customers on the forum, and they should do well. That is a good portion of VB's own undoing IMHO... they lost touch with their customer base.