Dear YaBB users,

Please visit the poll I have created --- Will you commit to buying a licensed version of YaBB 3 when it's available? --- on the YaBB 3 Development Forum.

Guest votes are allowed, so you don't have to be registered for the dev forum to vote.

Please vote for two reasons...

1. To show your support (or lack thereof) for YaBB 3, and;
2. To help test the Poll system on the YaBB 3 Development Forum.

In case you haven't registered for the dev forum and you do vote, some comment on the below would also be appreciated...

If you will purchase a licensed version, thank you! I'm sure all the hard-working YaBB developers and contributors will appreciate your support and encouragement.  

If not, why not?

If maybe, what would it take to encourage you to purchase a licensed version and help keep YaBB going into the future?

Thanks in advance for your comments and votes!

Dont see the point of paying, what will it achieve?

Forum is hosted for free, developers and software are open source, is it to pay for developers? Last time money was mentioned regarding Mod purchase it caused a bit of upset.

Corey made some good points, he admitted time is at a premium, especially with family and the time of year. Also good point of people using other types of social media. SMF discussed in another thread forked from yabb, obviously the right choice, now yabb is playing catchup.

I would not.

The majority of forums that I have seen are put together by individuals as a hobby and I doubt they would have the resources to pay.

However in the business world people using YaBB as part of a business should pay something.

Cheers


Derek

Hello everybody, I'd like to respond to several comments made in this topic.

A.- Project hosting is not free.  It 'was free' for about a year when we were on SourceForge supplied servers.  In case I have to remind you, it was awful.  You get what you pay for.  Prior to that YaBBForum.com was hosted byXIMinc, a company set up and run by Corey Chapman on the principle it will provide a home for YaBB and possibly generate some revenue.  Running a hosting operation is a competitive, time absorbing and stressful business and not well suited to a part time venture.  I'm not spilling the beans to say it was a costly misadventure.  Corey has said so himself.

Currently we are hosted by way of a very generous donation.  It's "NOT" a tax write off as we are not a charitable organization.  Its money out the door for the provider of the services.

It's unreasonable to expect to always have free hosting, particularly if we get development going again and you need a "big honking server" and are plenty of bandwidth.

B. - Developers aren't free either.  Working on open source projects takes a huge swath of time from your week.  I can speak to this directly myself; I work on two projects, host two forums and a free website. I estimate that each week I spend between 16 and 20 hours at minimum on these projects. Plus of course I have my regular work. There is not only the matter of coding new features and maintaining the code base, but also documentation, help system, bug tracking and testing has to be done as well. Did I forget to mention backups and maintenance of the website, codex/wiki and any other front and projects?  All this takes time and effort plus the individuals must have the requisite skills. Working on an open source project is much more a part-time job than a hobby, and the stresses are the same as on a paid full-time job.

As has been noted in this topic and others, Corey has a young family and a regular job. It is tough to balance all these things.

C. - Not everything needed to run an open source project is free. If you're going to run virtual machines for testing and you want to have Windows servers and Mac machines, you will need to purchase the correct licenses.  If (as in my other project) you need compilers for your Windows versions, you'll need licenses for them as well, ditto commercial database licenses.

D. - There is a whole litany of small services that aid development and research work that cost money. I won't dwell on the technicalities of it or the usefulness of the tools -- I simply speak from experience.

E. - There are a pretty fair number of organizational expenses if you're going to things properly. You need the services of an attorney, a CPA or Chartered Accountant (or the like), fees for incorporation filings and ongoing registration, tax returns, a bank account and books to be kept, and the list goes on. I was an officer (and president for a while) of a not for profit corporation dedicated to a sports league for a period of 12 years. I'm pretty familiar with all the necessary things to keep going, a long list.

I urge any of you who think this is a trivial pursuit, to ask some of the developers, documentationists, or support people how much time they have spent on the project.

As others have noted, it is appropriate for Open Source projects to ask for donations, and those using YaBB for commercial purposes particularly should donate or buy a license.

I hope I have made my point.

Good Luck to all.

I don't think money would encourage devs anyway, at least not the right ones for YaBB. If you've got a genuine interest and love for something then you'll do it whether you're paid or not.

I like to think that YaBB is still about sharing and learning, and put together by people who love the project - not their wallet.

I've been offered money myself on various occasions for helping people privately, and have never accepted.

A lot of great points have been made here. Thanks for sharing!  

Regarding free open source projects, those of course only work well when there are a group of people behind them that are dedicated, and more importantly, well organized.

In that regard, YaBB has lost its way.  

As for SMF, it's obviously very well organized, and it's structured to pay its way in terms of continuing its free open source forum, which I should point out for those who don't know was really a fork of YaBB.

But that doesn't mean SMF won't suffer the same fate that YaBB evidently has; at least YaBB as it currently exists. The same thing can happen to SMF although that's not as likely since as I mentioned, it seems to be very well organized, and there are a lot of people actively involved in its operations.

Bottom line: People like myself who have used YaBB for a really long time will likely stick with it until it's simply no longer possible. In truth, "we" chose a forum that had a shelf life; a long one; but a shelf life that nonetheless has evidently expired.

For me personally, I started a YaBB forum in 2002 on a site I've had online since 1997, and it's still going strong. I haven't yet decided YaBB's fate there even though I've recently mirrored it with its bigger, and more robust cousin SMF.

So to everyone, and to nobody in particular, I'll stick around if you stick around, but can "we" please catch up to SMF, and be its bigger, and older cousin?  

Edited:

Dandello wrote on Apr 30^th, 2012 at 11:49pm:

Ah, good to know ahead of time.  

Dandello wrote on Apr 30^th, 2012 at 11:49pm:

I guess there will always be an up and comer to move in where others presumably end up failing.

But hey, that's life.  

Edited:

The Wedge dev team is about the same age as my kid and his peers in his department at Uni - who are also an arrogant bunch - so I don't notice it as much I guess.