Idea for Mr. Darby!

Firstly, before I get started, I'd like to congratulate Kier on the arrival of his new Son James.

Now, moving on...

I was reading over Brandon's thread about being fed up with vBulletin and also the various comments made by fellow members. Those comments, along with the additional comments and the poll results in the thread that I started, led me to the following idea.

Now let me preface by saying, that I'm not sure what if any legal considerations there might be, that might not allow this idea to go forward. And let me also preface by saying that my idea obviously hinges and relies on a number of assumptions which I have made, many of which may or may not be plausible or possible.

So disclaimers aside, here is the idea that I would like throw out there for public consumption and discussion...

Considering that many current vB3 owners simply hate vB4 for a variety of reasons and considering that many of the same owners would appear to be unwilling to move to vB4, and also at the same time, be very reluctant to ever give IB another dime of their hard earned money and considering that many of these vB3 owners would be willing, or would perhaps even prefer to simply stick with the vBulletin 3.8 indefinitely, what if....

Kier offered a service, which in essence would be a paid service allowing access to security patches for vB3.8 The main benefit and objective of this service being, to allow current vB3 owners to carry on running vB3 beyond the period of time when IB decides to declare 3.8 EOL and stops supporting it.

As part of Kier's vB3 security service package, a purchaser would also then gain access or perhaps a preferred discount on the purchase of Kier's new (rumoured) BB software when it is finally released.

Now before you quickly dismiss this idea (if you have) hear me out on this...

I think something along these lines, would be a win/win situation for both Kier and also for many soon to be former vB customers.

And here's my rationale on why....

The reality is, that not too far in the future, vB will declare 3.8 EOL. At that point, it is becoming increasingly obvious, that many vB3 owners have either already made the decision, or will make the decision to not purchase a vB4 license, and will instead opt to move to IPB or other software. I would imagine some, will also keep choose to just running 3.8 although for many, this will unfortunately be is a less then secure state.

Some of the benefits for Kier under this concept would be....

He (Kier) gets some revenue for his new company/project with the sale of the security licenses. At the same time, he also buys himself time to work on his new software and release a strong well developed product, thereby increasing the likelyhood of it's long term success. Also, I believe Kier leaves himself in a much stronger position, in that once current vB3 owners start moving on and working through the hastle of moving their boards to other software, I would imagine they might be very reluctant to then turn around and go through the turmoil of doing another import all over again to move to Kier's new softare, especially given that possible negative impact changing BB software can have on established communities. Further, is much easier for Kier to create a robust importer for a large group of vB3 users, a program which he is intimately familiar with, versus the alternative of trying to create a variety of importers in an effort to win back former vB3 users who have since moved on.

The benefits for current vB3 owners has already been mostly spelled out, but at the risk of repeating myself and stating the obvious....

Current vB3 owners can continue to operate vB3 in a secure state past IB's EOL declaration. Owners avoid having to purchase a vB4 license or alternatively, purchase a license to IPB or something else. Owners avoid having to go through the work, turmoil and challenges of converting their communities over to new software that might be their second choice to vB3 or Kier's new BB. Current owners can avoid forking over another dime to IB, something many owners are very unwilling to do, given all that has transpired. There would be restored value in the ownership of a vB3 series license as it would actually be useful once again.

And those are just a few benefits I came up with off the top of my head. I would think there are many more possible benefits, to both Kier and vB3 owners, but I would think the basic idea and concept has been laid out well enough to spur discusstion, so I would therefore turn things over to you.

I look forward to your comments on the idea, be they words of support or caustic criticism and flat out dismissal of it being insane! :devil:

 

If someone could support v3.8 I would be quite interested.

 

I'm doing this for myself, and the reasons I can't really share with others is outlined here.

I would imagine it'd be the same for him.

 

Perhaps things could be done via new files and plug-ins.

We're legally allowed to modify the code, so I would think as long as the original is not being openly distributed, then perhaps that's an angle.

In the end, where there is a will, there is a way.

Passion wins!

 

It not tough. Someone could market themselves as a 'consultant' specializing in working on v3. People do make a living as a software consultants don't they?


No need to post solutions on forums. Yes I would pay for such a service.

 

I'm intrigued on what exactly you have in mind, aside from just bug fixing.

 

"Keeping it going". If there are issues that will break a site found out for some reason, such as a security issue, fix the issue. Many people will not have access to the latest branch that will have security patches. They will have v3.3, but not v3.5.2 and they will be willing to pay people to make those security fixes.

In addition, other small custom coding is always needed to enhance things. The vborg people may not keep the older modifications maintained.

I trust you Ryan, and others, but I'm slightly leary at some of the people at the other sites. In my own personal situation I believe I have someone to do those things for me in the long term, but if that person goes away for any reason I am extremely vulnerable.


I won't describe the actual mechanics regarding maintaining the security patches for obvious reasons, but there are thousands of vb forums out there that can no longer upgrade, it is not practical for them to. And v4 may never be viable to them for a number of reasons.

 

+1 and then some.

 

I like this idea.

 

May I suggest, if you are going to follow up on this idea, and I hope people do, "trust" is the operative word.

If I were to PM Nick or post in the "talk to the staff" forum on AA, "Nick, please mail me a ___ to ___, that is my home address" or someone from the staff at vbulletin sent a PM to Nick of a sensitive nature, and Nick was not technical, wouldn't he be cautious who he let work on AA?

In my own case I have information that is very sensitive and people trust me. I looked at the possible solutions at vborg, people posting 'willing to work', and I did not get the impression all of them were trustworthy. Then I noticed Wayne advertised at vbcodex that he was going to start consulting work and I was thrilled because he seems quite trustworthy when it comes to these types of things. But that never really took off, and the way he worded his service sounded like he had a staff of people that may be viewing the data. Eventually I did find someone but it took years.

Being technical almost comes secondary because someone could advertise a service like this saying all data will only be viewed by the owner of the company. If they did not know how to do something they could word questions in a way that would not reveal the information in the database on AA, vb.com, etc.

"Trust" is the operative word.

I needed to find someone that I could trust and work with long term, and pay real $ in a mutually beneficial arrangement, far higher than the average pay for a custom mod at vborg. I would think others are looking for a solution as well.

 

The problem I see you facing here is this. People don't mind giving support staff from vBulletin access to their site to fix stuff because if things go wrong they can hold the company responsible to a certain degree to put things right.

What would happen if lets say for example, some person who has a huge forum making X Big Dollars per day in revenue asks you to do something, then for some odd reason it all goes terribly wrong. He's left with a broken forum that's now off-line, and your not sure why or what you did that caused it to happen. He wants money from you for lost revenue each day his site is down because your the person who broke his forum!!!

He may have made some changes previously to his forum "that he's now forgot all about", and your changes have reacted very badly to it. He can't remember what he changed, meaning you have no clue either how to fix things if he can't help out to give you a clue what's wrong.

How are you going to cope with that kind of situation? Because it can happen, and you'll be liable for it if it does happen! He trusted you, he thought you was an expert, but you've just wrecked his forum. Do you see were I'm coming from here?