Is the end coming sooner rather than later for vBulletin

We all know vBulletin has become a complete disaster. Starting with the release of vBulletin 4 that created a tailspin of negative press, and poor releases. It seems the days for vBulletin are officially numbered. No amount of spin from Mark B, Wayne, or anyone else at IB is going to be able to cast a positive light on the project any longer. Adoption rates for vBulletin have been declining since IB took over with each release. vBulletin 4.x never lived up to it's hype or had promised features implemented. vBulletin 5 is even worse. A recent post by Paul over at vBulletin.com who works in an official capacity is openly admitting that resources for development are at an all time low.

Every single aspect of vBulletin is now a disaster. I feel pity for anyone holding out hope and/or gets tricked in to buying that software.

 

I've finally been persuaded to move my last forum running on the vBulletin platform to something else. It's not because there's anything particularly wrong with what it's currently running on, vBulletin 4, it's more because the add-on products I use are no longer supported, vBadvanced being one example. It'll be a sad day because this forum was launched on vBulletin 2.

So yeah, as far as I'm concerned it's the end.

 

Even if vbulletin would see no more releases, then it would still survive. Well basically that's what we are seeing. vbulletin is on life support getting just enough patches to keep it compatible with the basics.
More and more webmasters migrate their sites away from it and vb marketshare has been taking a nosedive in the last years, but just like many sites still run vb 3.7 or lower, there will always be websites that do just fine on old software. It still beats most open source forum software easily.

 

One thing that keeps it going.. IB is very motivated to keep VB3 patched. Much of their income is from the forums they host, and the last time I looked, none of them had moved beyond VB3. So I'm not worried about VB3 dying any time soon. And I guess they would look pretty silly if they supported VB3 and not VB4. Not to mention that most of their sales now are probably people buying VB5 to downgrade to VB4. And they buy it because vBulletin is still a very good product, despite its age. So think its death is not just around the corner. But I also think that IB is ruining it.

 

If you look at the main vb support forums, something is going on
There used to be plenty of staff support all day long
Now it looks like they are on limited hours to give support
It also looks like aliens have abducted Mark :O

 

It turns out worse than I thought. Paul M states:

VBC = vbulletin.com

 

Paul admitted that he also, only works part time
So it looks like the time he has to spend on vb4 and vb3 is very limited

 

So we should expect him to start turning up places bashing IB again soon once that paycheck stops.

 

Seems about right. So development on vB5 is just about completely done for then. Wonder what will become of it all here soon.

 

I will say it here once again, VB 5 will die sooner than later. Just look at the post above about the size of the team to know that VB5 is on life support. One full time developer? The product for all intents is dead and IB just have not pulled the plug yet. It is only a matter of time now.

Every VB5 site is a beta site you only have to look to the cloud to know this is true!

 

I like Mark a lot and admire him for the way he handles his daily abuse
Some seem to have it on their daily agenda, cup of tea in the morning, abuse mark, start work etc
No matter how much abuse he gets, he seems to have it Teflon pants on and it don't stick

I logged another fault on his test site yesterday
http://www.talknewsuk.com/testvb/forum/bugs-issues/bug-reports/5937-all-forums-showing-empty

I honestly wish they could pull vb back to how it was
If you look a thread on here which has a couple of big sites running vb5, none have upgraded to a newer version yet
http://www.admin-talk.com/threads/three-nice-looking-vb5-sites.51066/
They are all still running 5.0.5 and there are 8 newer releases now

 

I think I dislike Mark more than vb5 although I tend not to say anything on various forums.

 

From what Mark said I would assume it's much slower now, but not done for. One developer with occasional help from others can certainly move a product along. But the decline does show reduced interest on the part of IB.

 

He might as well enjoy vB while it lasts.

 

Yep, was surprised also to read there's only one full-time person working on vB5 now. Looks as though they've been reducing staff after staff going through motions until they eventually close down. They only have a skeleton crew in place now compared to before, that is not a good sign.