I have got to give vBulletin it's due... it does one thing perfectly...

[Adam Green]

Peggy, I meant IBs core income is from their forums that run on vbulletin. The income they get from us customers is minor.

Jelsoft needed to address the small board owners as there are far more small boards out there than the bigger ones. And they are only paid once per each forum regardeless how big it is.

But now IBs core income depends on their huge forums and if they would be intelligent - which they are - they need to address the big boards in their software development.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Adam Green

but they care much more in creating a better software product than jelsoft before!

I disagree. Do they care about making vBulletin better to suit their own auto-forums and such? Yes, of course. Do they care about making it better for the vBulletin customer-base as a whole? Probably not so much.

It's really skewed that a company like IB, who relies on vBulletin for the success of its communities, is now the developer of vBulletin. Being the developer and one of the (if not the) largest customers at the same time just doesn't work out.

The people in charge shouldn't have such close ties to the product as IB does. To me, it's almost comparable to letting employees create their own salaries - you know they're going to make decisions out of self-interest. What's to stop IB from acting the same way?

[Razasharp]

vB was and still is a nice system to style. The only problem with vB4 is the default is broke in so many places (IE6!!) but on the whole, from a professional designers pov it is better than the 3 series.

The way the code (template system) has been structured will take some getting used to, but in the long term it is a more efficient way to work. While the mark-up and css may be daunting at first, it is undoubtedly better. Certainly the html is semantic and lean.

The learning curve is steeper - esp with regards to the way inheritance is being applied. But on the whole the code is clearly a definite improvement and a lot of thought has gone into the way it all works.

My biggest gripe about vB4 is the way they didn't get it working for all major browsers including and specifically IE6!!

[Peggy]

Originally Posted by Adam Green

Peggy, I meant IBs core income is from their forums that run on vbulletin. The income they get from us customers is minor.

Jelsoft needed to address the small board owners as there are far more small boards out there than the bigger ones. And they are only paid once per each forum regardeless how big it is.

ah ok I gotcha.

You know what? I truly believe that they don't give a rats a** about small board owners. Truly. Sure there are more small board owners than big board owners, but they want the big board owners, and the multiple license owners. That's where the money is. Small board owners and hobbyist license holders don't bring them the big $'s.

[Adam Green]

As I pointed out I think IB is not that interested in selling vbulletin licences, they are far more interested in creating a product that suite their IB forum needs.

But on the other hand the pre-buy, the fast 4.0.0 gold release ... That does not fit in this picture I drawed.

[Peggy]

Originally Posted by Adam Green

But on the other hand the pre-buy, the fast 4.0.0 gold release ... That does not fit in this picture I drawed.

To be blunt, that does not fit into any logical picture that I could imagine, either.

[3Phase]

It fits if you think the way Bob Brisco does in this blog post.

excerpt

But we were still a bit too slow. By stringing together waves of testing, it might take many months to extract major learnings. And being slow is very expensive.

We've recently begun to solve this problem through massive parallelization of sense and respond techniques. Rather than waiting for the results of a wave of testing, we continually launch new, overlapping waves. While we are unable to incorporate learning from one wave into the next sequentially, we have multiplied the speed of individual insights. We then reconcile and apply the learnings "on-the-fly".

Our new process is less scientific, a little more costly, and a bit chaotic. But it is faster, creates far more value, and leads to higher quality.

The way I read it is that they are cutting back on testing ... and they are not fixing much before they launch. They just let the feedback keep coming in and continue to drop fix after fix after fix. That's my interpretation, dunno if that's what he really meant.

To me this explains the buggy release, the overwhelmed support staff, and the chaos in the vb4 "Questions & Troubleshooting" community forum. Where the same questions are being asked repeatedly (no manual and the search is too hard for most to use effectively,) and it's hard to get a knowledgeable answer. When threads are answered a good many deteriorate into complaining without much help offered.

As Bob's customer, my initial reaction the theory is: "Ow."

[3Phase]

Originally Posted by Peggy

To be blunt, that does not fit into any logical picture that I could imagine, either.

I completely agree. Especially the logical part.

[Abomination]

Originally Posted by 3Phase

It fits if you think the way Bob Brisco does in this blog post.

excerpt
The way I read it is that they are cutting back on testing ... and they are not fixing much before they launch. They just let the feedback keep coming in and continue to drop fix after fix after fix. That's my interpretation, dunno if that's what he really meant.

To me this explains the buggy release, the overwhelmed support staff, and the chaos in the vb4 "Questions & Troubleshooting" community forum. Where the same questions are being asked repeatedly (no manual and the search is too hard for most to use effectively,) and it's hard to get a knowledgeable answer. When threads are answered a good many deteriorate into complaining without much help offered.

As Bob's customer, my initial reaction the theory is: "Ow."

Agreed on all points. If you study the IB brands forums carefully you may notice they do not seem to care about quality. I really don't think the guy at the top cares about anything as long as the advertising revenue keeps coming in.

With that in mind, why would anyone continue to use vb? No assurance that the releases will work at all.

[3Phase]

Originally Posted by Abomination

Agreed on all points. If you study the IB brands forums carefully you may notice they do not seem to care about quality. I really don't think the guy at the top cares about anything as long as the advertising revenue keeps coming in.

With that in mind, why would anyone continue to use vb? No assurance that the releases will work at all.

Scroll back in history ... just as the internet was taking off with the public ... or just after telecom deregulation when the private long-distance companies were launching ... the era of adventure, chaos and opportunity. The frontier. Speed to market matters more than quality because there isn't much comparable for customers to choose from. And if you wait around for quality you miss that moment of limited customer choice. It's a moment in time, and it won't last, competitors will overtake and compete on price, driving down profits. I read between the lines that Bob gets that.

For IB it makes sense to vertically integrate production of the platform for their commercial forums. Yes, quite likely it means they will develop more for themselves than their license customers. Especially if it is true that license revenue is a sideshow compared with forum revenues.

Long term? Honestly? Why would IB sell a powerful forum platform to competitors of their own forums? [waving all that smoke and haze out of the crystal ball] (even though there are lots of companies doing business with their competitors ... but only if it makes financial sense to them)

[Peggy]

Originally Posted by 3Phase

It fits if you think the way Bob Brisco does in this blog post.


The way I read it is that they are cutting back on testing ... and they are not fixing much before they launch. They just let the feedback keep coming in and continue to drop fix after fix after fix. That's my interpretation, dunno if that's what he really meant.

To me this explains the buggy release, the overwhelmed support staff, and the chaos in the vb4 "Questions & Troubleshooting" community forum. Where the same questions are being asked repeatedly (no manual and the search is too hard for most to use effectively,) and it's hard to get a knowledgeable answer. When threads are answered a good many deteriorate into complaining without much help offered.

As Bob's customer, my initial reaction the theory is: "Ow."

The guy's an idiot.

[Abomination]

Originally Posted by 3Phase

Scroll back in history ... just as the internet was taking off with the public ... or just after telecom deregulation when the private long-distance companies were launching ... the era of adventure, chaos and opportunity. The frontier. Speed to market matters more than quality because there isn't much comparable for customers to choose from. And if you wait around for quality you miss that moment of limited customer choice. It's a moment in time, and it won't last, competitors will overtake and compete on price, driving down profits. I read between the lines that Bob gets that.

Another way to say the software in the future will have too many bugs and people should start migrating now.

Originally Posted by 3Phase

For IB it makes sense to vertically integrate production of the platform for their commercial forums. Yes, quite likely it means they will develop more for themselves than their license customers. Especially if it is true that license revenue is a sideshow compared with forum revenues.

License sales are indeed a sideshow. What bothers me most is Bob does not care about the forums they run. Possibly a new and integrated ad mechanism, that counts the 'impressions'.

Originally Posted by 3Phase

Long term? Honestly? Why would IB sell a powerful forum platform to competitors of their own forums? [waving all that smoke and haze out of the crystal ball] (even though there are lots of companies doing business with their competitors ... but only if it makes financial sense to them)

Right, so long term expect far higher prices for the software, possibly a revenue sharing agreement, anything for revenue.

So why use vb4 at all?

[_| () R | Z]

Originally Posted by Kier

The vB4 styling system in essence follows my design, but unfortunately, various factors meant that what was finally shipped fell a long way short of what I had originally intended. It's missing huge portions of the styling UI that would have made it properly useable...

Kier, what else was scraped by IB what otherwise would have been in VB4?

[Kier]

I'm afraid I can't comment on matters that would be considered to be employee privileged knowledge.

All I will say is that seeing it scrapped or indefinitely postponed made me very sad.

[cheat-master30]

^Would it have revolutionised forum software in general?