So why is the vB upgrade pricing so hated?

The whole, pay full price for an upgrade thing? Because to a degree, I can sort of see the logic behind it. Do you pay a flat fee to upgrade your computer or TV or operating system or video game console? Nope.

Then if vBulletin 4 and 5 are different products like that, why is paying full price to upgrade seen as some strange thing? It's pretty much how Microsoft Windows works. Hell, it's exactly how video game systems work, you don't get the Wii U for a lower price because you already own a Wii, you pay the same high price as everyone else.

Yes I get the arguments that without an upgrade your purchased system will stop working and supposedly other real life products don't, but is that really internet software exclusive? If your only TV was an old analog one that'd stop working after the digital switchover, yet you don't seem people asking for a free television.

And what about computers? You don't see people complain they can't use their Windows 95 disc on a modern machine or something. Or more appropriately, that their 1988 version of Photshop doesn't work on Windows 7 and that Adobe should give them a free upgrade.

So why is forum software so different? Is it because it's a digital/non physical product, which many people seem to assume can't be owned or have less value than a physical one? Because so's any other software, and you don't get upgrades for them for a low fee. There's a ton of things to rightfully slam vBulletin 5 for, the supposedly poor quality coding, the mediocre style, the fact it needs javascript to work, the urls changing with the wrong form of redirects, the lack of features found in older versions or the fact a buggy piece of software is being sold at full price (to be fair, this isn't that strange a thing, at least in some fields. If Action 52 and Big Rigs over the road racing were released in pre alpha form, then that kind of makes vB 5 look solid by comparison), but the license changes really aren't as unreasonable as people make them sound.

What do you think?

 

The argument is here for people who've been with vBulletin a long time. Pre-IB take over, vBulletin was $160 for a life time license and you paid $30 or $40 per year for access to upgrades, if you wanted them that was it. It didn't matter if they released vB 4, 5, and 6, all with in the span of a year you still only paid $40 for access to updates.

IB came in and completely changed the terms for vB 4 without regard for existing customers. Lots of people including myself were pissed for a long time. Couple that with the utter flop that the release of vB 4 was and what looks to be another flop with vB 5 you can see why people are so pissed off -- they paid a boatload more than the original license structure for what was chit software.

I see why IB set this pricing structure but I still feel it's unfair to pre-IB takeover licensees