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Old 4th November 2010
J65nko J65nko is offline
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Default Forumware giant vBulletin sues ex-devs (again)

From http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11...xenforo_again/

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Internet forumware giant vBulletin has filed a second lawsuit against its former lead developer, who recently launched his own forum platform with the UK-based startup XenForo. With the new suit, vBulletin claims copyright infringement, breach of contract, and misappropriation of trade secrets.

XenForo and its lead developer, ex-vBulletin man Kier Darby, deny both suits in their entirety and "expects the claims to be defeated."
Also see http://xenforo.com/community/threads...tigation.7567/
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Old 4th November 2010
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That's cool.

I really would like to know though, how the hell forum software can include "Trade secrets", seriously. Heck, you can create a "Competing" product in a few hours, although it wouldn't be half as good as vBulletin. The license fees for XenForo Beta on it's own makes it an attractive concept, especially if it's good software.
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Old 4th November 2010
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I seriously doubt any remotely competent person would be stupid enough to use code from their previous employer in a new similar product.

As for the "Trade secrets", that does sound rather silly, vBulletin is open source. Kind of hard to keep things a secret ...

At a glace, XenForo look pretty nice btw ... And has the old vBulletin-style license costs.
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Old 5th November 2010
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I always thought vBulletin was proprietary but being written in PHP, you get the source out of neccessity, but no real *Open Source* rights to hack and redistribute it. If there's an OSE of vBulletin, sign me up!
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Old 5th November 2010
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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The term open source typically just means source availability, not necessarily the "free software" or OSI definition.

I don't remember, but I think vBulletin allows source modification but disallows redistribution.. XenForo seems to share the same model.

This would allow further integration into existing websites, and nice tweaks like what Carpetsmoker (..was it you?) added.. [oman][fman][nman].

I think there was a thread about why they chose vBulletin, and not some other more permissively licensed project.
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Old 5th November 2010
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Once you have the license, you can do with the code what you want.

The Javascript is normally "minified", but a seperate download is available. The original PSD files for the graphics are also available.

vBulletin is open source, but not free.

Quote:
I always thought vBulletin was proprietary but being written in PHP, you get the source out of neccessity
You can obfuscate/minify PHP fairly easy if you really want ...

Quote:
This would allow further integration into existing websites, and nice tweaks like what Carpetsmoker (..was it you?) added.. [oman][fman][nman].
It's just a configuration panel where you can set some search/replace patterns
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Old 6th November 2010
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Carpetsmoker View Post
vBulletin is open source, but not free.
Than some project with a relationship to vBulletin like CentOS has to RHEL should be possible, yet I have never heard of one ^_^.


Quote:
Originally Posted by BSDfan666 View Post
The term open source typically just means source availability, not necessarily the "free software" or OSI definition.
Maybe Stallman should have tried LibreWare before he tried Free Software?





Open Source is actually in the dictionary:

Code:
open source 
 
— n
 	a. intellectual property, esp computer source code, that is made freely available to the general public by its creators
 	b. Compare closed source ( as modifier ): open source software

closed source 
 
— n
 	a. intellectual property, esp computer source code, that is not made available to the general public by its creators
 	b. Compare open source ( as modifier ): closed source software
Which to my knowledge would make vBulletin nether Open nor Closed source, due to it's distribution and licensing terms. I've usually used the words "Proprietary software" for a reason, hehe.
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