The Allegations and the Torrent of Passionate Comments

After having read the claims made by Internet Brands for myself, the best that I can conclude is that (a) many of the fiery opinions contained in the flurry of comments are misplaced and factually and legally incorrect, and (b) Internet Brands considers Xenforo, which hasn’t even been released yet, a serious potential player in the forum and community software market. There isn’t much information available as to the allegations in the lawsuit against Kier, Mike and Ashley, all former employees of Jelsoft – the original company that created the “beloved” vBulletin software. Many forum owners are outraged that Internet Brands (the subject of at least one controversy) would actually “stoop so low” so as to sue these good people who brought them the software that made their magic possible. From my perspective, it is impossible yet to tell whether Internet Brands has been wronged by well paid former employees and is vigorously attempting to rightfully protect its property or whether the lawsuit is a frivolous claim by a big corporation with deep pockets designed to unfairly thwart the efforts of a new competitor in the marketplace that leaves an especially bitter taste in its mouth.

Contracts & Business Torts: Severance & Non-Compete Agreements

While this case is filed in the UK, the legal issues and how they are handled are usually similar in substance. In situations where a valuable employee has parted ways with an employer, severance agreements are commonplace. An employee may be paid a relatively generous and non-required sum of money in return for signing an agreement not to compete with the former employer, amongst other items that may be contained therein. In the US, non-compete agreements are generally enforceable but the courts are loathe to restrain any working person from finding meaningful employment using the skill he or she has cultivated any longer than is absolutely necessary. As a result, most of these agreements are typically enforced no more than a maximum of one year’s time and only within what would be considered a reasonable geographic area. It is not uncommon for large corporations to present employees with harsh, stringent agreements (such as a 2 to 3 year period of non-competition) with a “savings” clause – a stipulation that, should a court find that the agreement is unenforceable for that extended period of time, the court will not invalidate the agreement but use the longest period of time which the non-compete agreement could be held valid and enforceable.

I noticed an interesting fact. Wikipedia tells me that Kier and Mike left Jelsoft on June 19, 2009. Just about a year later and perhaps coincidentally, the xenforo.com domain was registered (June 4, 2010.) The first post I’ve located on the Xenforo website is July 28, 2010, just after the one year period of departure and perhaps work may have commenced on Xenforo the day after the anniversary of their departure. I have no idea whether or not any non-compete agreement exists nor its terms. But there is one very interesting statement made by Internet Brands which makes me wonder whether any kind of severance and non-compete agreement exists or applies at all that could legally prevent the Xenforo team from developing a rival forum software.

“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.”

Apparently this statement does not refer to a severance payment or non-compete agreement. Might this entire dispute center around Internet Brands not being happy that, after paying a handsome salary to employees and an additional bonus after the purchase of Jelsoft, the employees left the company and decided to compete against the old employer? Impossible to say for sure at this point but certainly an interesting thought.

Copyright Infringement and Breach of Contract Claims

The second useful statement contained in the vBulletin post alleges that Kier and Mike “refactored” the vBulletin code and created Xenforo. Essentially, Internet Brands seems to imply that Xenforo contains at least some intellectual property that is still owned by the former employer and has been reworked into something completely different but still a product of the vBulletin process – that the new Xenforo software is somehow derivative of vBulletin and “an expression of the prior work.” This is a rather vague and generic statement not specific in nature and doesn’t specify whether the prior work is actual code or other work product that may be covered under copyright law and/or an employment agreement. I’m guessing that more details will be forthcoming or may already be contained in the equivalent of the “complaint” in the Court of England and Wales, although it remains to be seen whether any of them are truly substantive.

The law governing the unauthorized copying of code is little different than the copying of text crafted by an employee commissioned and owned by an employer. I’m not sure that the crux of the disagreement centers around using specific code owned by Internet Brands even though Internet Brands claims the code was “refactored” into something else. It is possible that Internet Brands is claiming that the founders of Xenforo used work product created during their employ that was ultimately discarded by Internet Brands and never made its way into the vBulletin product. Looking at Xenforo with the naked eye, it certainly looks, feels and acts very differently than vBulletin of any version. Perhaps Internet Brands is referring to the overall design, architecture, look and feel of the Xenforo software or other forum design which may have been unused – and the former employees decided to make a go with it on their own. An employer’s decision not to use work performed and provided by an employee doesn’t automatically make that work the property of the employee. But until I know more, I’m not quite sure who may own these “ideas”, whether they have been sufficiently reduced to tangible form such as within a document or even whether they even have the ability to qualify as intellectual property for which one can register an exclusive right of ownership.  But this is all pure speculation and no specificity has yet been provided.

Preliminary Injunctions

Interestingly enough, Internet Brands “requested that Kier, Mike and Ashley refrain from selling the software while the issues, inclusive of our infringement claims, are heard in the courts.”  Apparently they did not seek that the court prevent (or “enjoin”) Xenforo from selling its software today – the first day of the Xenforo pre-sale. Perhaps not coincidentally, the lawsuit was filed yesterday. At least in the US, a plaintiff with a strong case and potentially significant damages can seek an emergency protective measure which temporarily prevents the defendant from starting or continuing to perform the activity that is the subject of the lawsuit until after a hearing may be held. In order to successfully obtain such a “preliminary injunction”, a plaintiff must show the court that this emergency measure is (i) absolutely necessary as allowing the defendant to continue with its plans would cause “irreparable harm” for which simple money damages would not be sufficient, and (ii) that it has a strong case and is likely to succeed on the merits of its case. I’m sure there is a similar procedure in the UK but I’m not sure whether Internet Brands’ decision not to proceed with such a strategy is based upon (a) legal issues specific to UK law, (b) the fact that money damages might be sufficient and it would fail one of the two prongs of the test to qualify for a preliminary injunction, or (c) its case against Xenforo isn’t very strong.

Conclusion: Wait and See

At this point I think it’s useless to try to make ironclad conclusions about who is right and who is the true villain. All we do know is that Internet Brands alleges there is at least a sufficient basis upon which to make a claim that a reasonable dispute exists. Soon we’ll see whether there is actually any meat on those bones when we are able to see the substance – or lack of substance – of the claim filed by Internet Brands against Xenforo. Until then, I’m going to spend most of my time continuing to enhance TheLaw.com’s law forums and manage the exciting news happening here – the release of a very cool iPhone app and Android app — a ~7,500 word law dictionary and comprehensive legal guide and mobile gateway to TheLaw.com. This is the best way to keep my mind off a lawsuit and remaining productive - happy foruming everyone!

The Players

For those of you who are new to the vBulletin fiasco, here’s a short summary. In July 2007, the company that developed vBulletin (Jelsoft) was sold to Internet Brands, a scavenger and operator of community websites (yes, this means they are both developer and in competition with its customers.) After years of paying $30 to receive all the updates to my vBulletin 3 software, Internet Brands raised the price of the software and the annual maintenance fees for product updates to $40 in 2008. The following year in 2009,Internet Brands suddenly ceased offering customers the ability to purchase the annual updates to their vBulletin 3 software so it could pre-sell vBulletin 4 licenses instead for $130-210. In 2010, vBulletin Solutions plans to sell the same “maintenance pack” for $50 that I should have been able to buy for $40 last year and $30 the year earlier.

The Shut Out

I’m sure you’re thinking right now you’ve misread. One day the company simply stopped offering a customer who owned, e.g. version 3.6.2 the ability to download later versions of the product? Yes, that’s exactly what happened. Your choice was to either pay $130 or more during the October 2009 “presale” to buy vBulletin 4 (not out for months) and receive all vBulletin 3 updates or sit tight with your current version and watch forever from the sidelines. Why was this done? The only reason I can surmise is that Internet Brands wanted to make big numbers that quarter. vBulletin 3 owners would likely have opted to renew their right to receive vBulletin 3 product updates and pass on the vBulletin 4 upgrade, waiting to see what the raw product might become later. Ironically, right after the presale was pumped in press releases which reported “record sales”, the GM and chief presale promoter left the company to retire to build his dream house in Central America. You’re probably thinking what I’m thinking.

We spent the $130 to receive the updates to The Law Forums as well as a few other licenses but not the rest, hedging our losses. Despite our upgrading to vBulletin 4, it’s almost 10 months later since the dreaded pre-sale and many forums, including our own, have not been upgraded. We’ve refrained from doing so due to the reports of numerous bugs, interface and performance issues.

Unfortunately the price for a vBulletin 3 to vBulletin 4 upgrade is so high, it makes our vBulletin 3 licenses worthless as an upgrade option – even if vBulletin 4 is ever worth using. Quandary – Internet Brands will not be able to shake cash from vBulletin 3 license holders. How can they shake money from the tree?

The Tale

While numerous customers are irate that they haven’t heard much of anything concerned the next update to their vBulletin 4.0.4 software, Internet Brands was glad to announce the “Annual Maintenance Crap Pack” this past week. For the bargain price of $50, Internet Brands will sell all vBulletin customers who didn’t upgrade to vBulletin 4, all of the maintenance releases. In fact, they are giving certain customers a $20 discount as a way of appreciating their “valued support.”

So let me get this straight – the yearly product updates that I bought for $30 in 2007, which Internet Brands raised to $40 in 2008, and refused to sell me in 2009… is being offered to customers for $50 in 2010?  Now here is the kicker – if you bought a vBulletin 3 license for $180 in late August or September 2009, you found out that you had to pay $130 more to upgrade to vBulletin 4 just one month later! I don’t recall “courtesy upgrades” being given to those purchasers. Now since those last few purchasers of vBulletin 3 will no longer being able to download the updates to their software one year later, rather than giving just them these dozen product fixes gratis to “valued” customers, Internet Brands is charging them only $30! I apologize – giving them a $20 discount off the MSRP of $50 in return for their valued support.

When I read all of this, my jaw dropped. What made me even more shocked was witnessing the Stockholm Syndrome in the vBulletin Forums (closed to non-customers), where several budget customers were thanking Internet Brands for giving them this opportunity. Remarkable.

The Sting

I have a dilemma. Originally TheLaw.com was planning on using the vBulletin 4 platform, along with several other products, as part of our long term strategy. This was not because we wanted to do so, but switching to other forum software meant significant transitional costs in time, money and the unknown of reindexing and redirecting internal links on our site. As of right now it appears it will take a significant time for Internet Brands to fix what is wrong with vBulletin 4 while stabilizing the core product, which includes the potential overhaul of the forum templating and style system. Even if some of the technical problems are solved, it will take major time investment to customize my forums to the point where they return to being user friendly (the search interface, in particular, is a disaster in vBulletin 4) – only to have to do it again in version 4.1. If only the company would share its short and long term plans for the vBulletin product, which it does not.

But I have other concerns. How many fees am I going to have to pay in the future to Internet Brands? The past 3 years have been punishing and refusing me the ability to upgrade my software – without any prior notice or opportunity – reeks of a similar odor as consumer fraud. I have one other very significant concern and have personal experience with this issue – Internet Brands is now in competition with me and every site that runs vBulletin software. I cannot find examples of its own websites which have been converted to the new vBulletin 4 product. Why not? They certainly have the resources and far more “know how” than any of its customers whom they expected to upgrade. Are the customers being used as beta testers (guinea pigs) before converting their own sites? There is always the issue of Internet Brands having a competitive advantage, having inside knowledge of their own software and any future developments. It’s disconcerting, to say the least.

At this point I’ve begun experimenting with Invision Power Systems’ InvisionBoard. Wow! The interface, ease of use and overall direction are miles ahead of where vBulletin 4 is at this point. There has been some learning curve but  I’m going to launch one site shortly using IPB. I have been toying with the idea of converting The Law Forums to this great product. My main limitation? The extremely difficult migration of all user data and statistics from vBulletin and its corresponding plugins. This includes some unique searching and indexing functionality that make The Law Forums one of the best resources online to find law that pertains to your state and jurisdiction. There is also the issue of forum links which will now be forever changed. But we’ll have to see what sacrifices can be made since it is preferable to being held hostage and being forced to enjoy the experience. Time to get my Internet Brands Vuvezela and watch the World Cup Final.

Challenge of Changing the Licensing Model

Changing the provisions of a software license can be most challenging, especially when it may significantly impact the timing and amount of payments required from customers. I think that there are at least three fundamental rules a company should follow and plan carefully in advance of such a change:

1. Communication: Listen to and address customer concerns – ensure that the licensing and pricing changes are easily understood, accomodating and provide reasonable prior notice
2. Pricing: Calculate a reasonably acceptable market price and appreciate your true ceiling for customer tolerance
3. Execution: Ensure your sales and customer support team is ready to carry out the change and address anticipated negative feedback

Part I: Adequacy of Communication

For almost 10 years, customers of Jelsoft could purchase a forum license for a fee of roughly $160-180 which provided one year of product updates and an annual maintenance renewal option of $40. Without any prior notice, vBulletin sent out a confusing “pre-sale” email on October 13 to “preferred customers” informing them of important details which would be effective immediately. A new “powerful” product was announced in two varieties – (i) a new version of the existing forum product and (ii) the “suite” which also included additional content management modules. The existing license structure would be be changed from the purchase and annual maintenance subscription fee model to a one time payment for each release of a major version of the software. Customers were given a two week decision period to either pay for an upgrade to the suite from their current vBulletin 3 forums product or pay significantly more later (emphasis added.)

As a preferred customer with an active license, we are excited to offer the vBulletin Publishing Suite at a pre-sale discount price of only $130 (over 50% off regular price). This is a truly limited one-time special offer giving you $120 off the upgrade price but will expire on Friday October 30, 2009.

Customers arrived at the newly designed vBulletin web site, sporting a confident Superman-like mascot tearing open his buttoned-down shirt to reveal a “V” on his tee and a nifty new powerful URL – best-forum-software.com. When trying to purchase this special offer, many customers discovered the $130 upgrade price for an active license was not accurate. What IB might have intended to say was that the only customers might qualify would be those customers who were still within the first year from date of purchase and those who had annually renewed their annual maintenance subscription fees and what Jelsoft prior referred to as a “license renewal” or “annual update service.” Since an owned vBulletin license does not “expire” and the licensee could continue to run the forum software (but not receive updates), then a customer who owned a license to the software, by definition, still has an “active license” that is “effective until terminated.”  The lack of an adequate distinction by vBS led to a wave of customer confusion that spread through the vBulletin presales forum like a pandemic. This pricing “anomaly” was explained by vBulletin General Manager, Ray Morgan’s post on October 14 not as an error, but as follows (emphasis added):

Due to an overwhelming response and interest in the pre-sale event for vBulletin 4.0 Publishing Suite, we’ve decided to extend an offer to those customers with inactive licenses. For licenses that expired in the last 12 months, we are offering an extra $45 discount for advance ordering, in addition to the publicly available pre-sale savings. This means the all new vB 4.0 Publishing Suite will cost you only $190, a total savings of $95. For licenses that expired more than 12 month ago, we are offering an extra $25 discount for advance ordering, in addition to the publicly available pre-sale savings. This means the all new vB 4.0 Publishing Suite will cost you only $210, a total savings of $75.

So the official explanation of the original email is still wrong but I’ll explain what they meant to say. vBS intended that NO upgrade offers were to be extended to customers who had active licenses but expired annual maintenance subscription (and perhaps expiring just a day ago.) As a result of “overwhelming response” from customers (complaints?), instead of paying $40 + $130 for a renewal fee for annual maintenance subscription plus the upgrade, customers would pay $60 + $130, resulting in a “savings” of $95. And if your annual maintenance subscription expired more than 12 months ago, instead of paying the $40 + $130 fee you’d pay $90 + $130, resulting in a “savings” of $75. Are all of these special customer “discounts” clear? Astonishingly, the response I read in the forums that “excused” the emailing snafu was the following honest explanation by a vBS staff member:

Actually, the system was written so that it doesn’t make any differentiation between active or inactive licenses. Why we don’t know. You can sure it will be changed before the next big promotion though.

This is certainly not what is expected from the marketing department of a public company. I appreciated the rare, honest reply but let’s have more transparency. Considering that Internet Brands and vBS promised vehemently that subsequent promotions will never be as generous as the current pre-sale, I wonder whether the apologies will be forgiven by customers. Even more interesting is that contract and consumer law suggest that a unilateral and non-obvious mistake in an offer is binding on the offeror – I wonder if this would make for an actionable case by customers with active licenses but expired maintenance subscriptions.

All of these issues could have been dealt with appropriately had vBS provided some prior notice to customers about imminent and important license changes. Management could have responded to and addressed important and overlooked customer concerns. In addition to a feeling of disrespect, customers were not provided with ample time to understand their options and make reasonable choices. For those who invested in multiple licenses, the huge cost of having to shell out $130 to 210 per license within two short weeks could present significant financial challenges. Notification to clients of these policy changes would be extremely difficult and require a lightning quick response for an explanation, approval and payment. Did anyone at Internet Brands solicit opinions from customers and address what would seem to be obvious customer concerns? Why the need for a high pressure two week pre-sale? Where was the dialogue? But more than just an inconvenience to customers, not having knowledge of the new policies would result in customers losing actual money which would find its way into the pockets of vBS and Internet Brands, as you’ll see shortly.

Part II: Justification of Pricing

The world of php development with visible, modifiable source code is an interesting, unique, creative community environment. Jelsoft grew exponentially because the founders and original employees, many of whom are unfortunately no longer with the company, understood the quid pro quo — provide a good product at a reasonable cost, care about your customers and you will generate enthusiasm and loyalty from a creative group of zealous adopters who will volunteer enhancements on their own time. It was commonplace to see customers donating free technical support and valuable vBulletin product enhancements for free, significantly increasing the value of the underlying forum product.

In general, annual maintenance fees and software updates will rarely extend beyond the 50-70% cost of the purchase price. Customers feel that they should have retain some tangible residual benefit as a product adopter and investor. This sentiment is probably more prevalent amongst a customer base consisting of a contributing, programming, developing online community. I am not sure that the new management team at Internet Brands that replaced most of the founding team fully understands and appreciates why Jelsoft grew into the juggernaut it has been and how to properly maintain the symbiotic relationship. An offer for a $130 upgrade or $285 new is not by itself an unfair price - I think it could be - but the timing required to pay and lack of equally fair treatment to customers across the board is a significant problem (e.g. the additional penalties to licensees with expired licenses and those wishing a bare forum upgrade.) But the two week pricing ultimatum and significant reduction of the value of purchased software licenses seemed to send one message to the loyal development community - there is not much perceived value in your being a patron and contributor and that we, the company, are in sole control of our own destiny.

From my deciphering of the terms (please correct me if this is wrong), forum owners were left with two choices: (i) pay a forum upgrade fee of $175 that is an astounding 90% of the cost of buying a new forum license outright ($195), or (b) within two weeks and without seeing the product or having an estimated release date, pay from $130 up to $210 based upon whether your annual maintenance subscription was active. If it wasn’t active and you didn’t know you should have renewed for $40 (how could you?), the “special offer” meant that you’d pay $5 less or $15 more than the price of buying a brand new forum! As a result of the Internet Brands pricing plan, the value of a customer’s vBulletin forum license version 3 plunged instantly from $180 to practically nothing. After all, who would pay much for a $180 license that now cost $175 just to upgrade if a new license cost just $195? $5 to save $15? The same went for the $250 upgrade fee post pre-sale, which is just $35 less than the $285 asking price. So what is the net result and why is this important? Because by making the customers $180 license worth almost nothing on the resale market, all sales by new customers will be new licenses purchased directly from Internet Brands. This might explain how Internet Brands is “setting sales records” in their press releases!

It was even worse for customers who purchased vBulletin 3 forum add-on products (such as blogs and project tools) from vBS, who apparently lost their $50+ investments, being entitled only to the same upgrade options to the vBulletin suite as a customer who purchased only the forum product. Customers who wanted or needed to just stay with version 3.x and continue receiving the upgrades are offered no $40 option at all of which I am aware – the only choice is to pay $175 – $210 to be forced to upgrade to the pre-sold but still unreleased version 4. It seems unconscionable to not inform a customer who bought version 3.x before the pre-sale of a need to pay an annual maintenance subscription for $40 or continue to offer this option. Numerous requests in the vBulletin forum to define actual company policy went unanswered.

In the forums, customers alleged consumer fraud – that the $310 price paid by customers occurred because vBS was selling product under old licensing terms when it knew that the sudden change to the new model would require an additional $130 investment. In my experience and to promote fairness, it is industry custom for software developers to provide free upgrades for license purchases made in close proximity to a release of a major upgrade – a grace period. To my knowledge vBS provided no such benefit. As a result, a customer who purchased vBulletin 3 in late Semptember for $180 would need to pay an additional $130 in the October pre-sale in order to be guaranteed receipt of all vBulletin 4 updates. $180 + $130 = $310.  With reasonable prior notice, that same customer might have waited a week to pay just $235 for a new license. Customers with expired annual maintenance subscriptions had expired could pay $40 and avoid newly created vBS penalties of an additional $20 – 80 for the upgrade.  I personally don’t see the cost “savings” – do you?

Part III: Successful Execution

As if the pricing confusion didn’t cause enough chaos, vBS didn’t show any vBulletin 4 product to customers who were expected to pay as much as $210 to upgrade. General Manager Ray Morgan responded to mounting complaints in the vBS customer forums about not seeing what had been allegedly in development for a year with his post on the night of October 21 (emphasis added):

We know everyone is anxious to see vB4 in action, so here it comes! We are planning to upgrade vBulletin.com to vB4 starting very early tomorrow morning. The plan is to put /forums/ into maintenance mode in the middle of the night (Pacific time) and be live again by mid-morning. Please note that this rollout will be an early beta release. By early, I mean really early, much earlier than betas have historically been rolled out on vb.com. It is not a release candidate, so there will be rough spots, which we’re still working on, but we are choosing to make this available now in order to give you the earliest possible view of what is being built.

So the product being sold in this limited pre-sale offer is in early stage development – I mean really early. Perhaps I’m understanding why there is no anticipated release date. The message continued:

Why didn’t you wait until the product was more “done”?
To give you the earliest possible view of the new vB4.

Why didn’t you wait until the CMS could be released along with Forum and Blog?
To give you the earliest possible view of the new vB4.

Why aren’t you delaying the release until feature _____ is implemented?
In the spirit of release early, release often, we want to get releases out to customers early, in order to get real-world feedback, and often, so that they can start benefiting from basic features as soon as they are available, with more advanced features following shortly after in subsequent releases.

See you in the morning!

So vBS was upgrading their own forum during pre-sale week to be nice to its customers, not to address mounting concerns of “seeing is believing.” Well, the vBS customer forum wasn’t back the following morning… nor the next morning after! During the extended downtime period, customers lampooned the new vBS Superman reference, best forum software URL, and a mysterious cartoon skunk that appeared on the “down for maintenance” page where the customer support forums had been. General manager, Ray Morgan, explained on the afternoon of October 24 why the customer support forums were inaccessible for over 24 hours (emphasis added):

We decided to take some extra time before bringing the forums back up after the upgrade to 4.0. Briefly, here’s what happened.

First, the good news: The installation of 4.0 itself actually went as planned. The upgrade to 4.0 Publishing Suite from the 3.8.4 base product was seamless, and that agrees with the success the alpha/beta team has seen up to this point. The issues we encountered were related to the fact that the instance of vB running on vBulletin.com has integration points with various business systems: administration, release management, ticket support, the product information site, and more. Cooler heads make better problem solvers, so we chose to investigate and solve the problems with the site offline rather than live to the world.

The issues we ran into are unique to our environment, and they are not things that would factor into a normal customer installation. We’re happy to have the forums live and stable. As noted in my announcement Wednesday night, this is a very early beta release, so there are still known bugs yet to be fixed before the gold. As you find bugs, you may report them here as usual. As we work through the beta cycle, we will periodically update this installation to include the latest bug fixes.

Got it – so this wise decision made during a limited pre-sale period included extended downtime because the cool, sharp heads thought it would be wise to show off the forums on their own live customer support forum and not on a testing site. They also provided no view of the back end administration or any of the extras included in the suite. I won’t elaborate on the extended confusion in the vBulletin customer support forums and allegations by customers that they were banned for criticizing the company’s handling of this entire upgrade experience.

Conclusions – So Where do we and vBS go from here?

As a long time owner of vBulletin software and contributor to the vBulletin customer forums and vBulletin.org modifications forum, I’m not sure where this once innovative product is headed. The product certainly seems far from being released, especially the suite. I can only imagine that this presale has placed great stress on the development team to officially release this very early beta product out the door as soon as possible, even with a multitude of issues (and upcoming explanations that this was done “to satisfy the customer and get a first exciting look.”)

It seems to me that many customers who chose to upgrade did so not because they had any faith in the upcoming product - they hoped to save the fleeting value of their investment in their vBulletin forum licenses by reselling the suite version later when the price rises to full retail. I wonder whether the flow of free forum modifications may slow to a trickle by angry contributing developers who feel unappreciated. I’ve been forced to look at several competing forum software packages, all of which are quite impressive – these include the commercial Invision Power Board Forum Suite and the free myBB, phpBB and Simple Machines Forums software. Customers have been vocal about their migration away from vBulletin – angry sites like vbTruth, vbFlames, vBull, and if names are correct, it seems this may have compelled vBS General Manager Ray Morgan to provide explanations on an external site, AdminAddict.

New customers may question whether to trust this new Internet Brands management team, who are not providing any reasonable estimates as to time periods for major version upgrades. During times of limited cash flow, will these paid number “version upgrades” arrive with greater frequency? It’s difficult to say. The old guard was beyond reproach. This new executive management team seems to be as confident as ever, believing that their power of market share will ultimately outlast any initial negative customer dissension. The licensees will whine and complain but, in the end, they will begrudgingly crawl back and pay the upgrade fees for the best forum software… ever. And they will donate their modifications for free en masse. This remains to be seen, especially during the present “global recession.” What we can say for sure is that this is certainly a good case study to follow, from a business and legal perspective, for companies seeking to change their software licensing models.