The Copyright Notice Affair...

[Aldreis]

Hi, John & James,

As you probably know, the copyright notice is one of the top polemical issues at the UBB Support Forums. In fact, a real battle.

To avoid that, have you already determined the exact vBulletin copyright notice requirements, such as wording, place, size, link / not link, button / text, etc.? I couldn’t find the vB license terms...

Soon, most of us will be working very hard to fully integrate ( visually speaking ) vBulletin in our sites. But, I must say, a rigid copyright notice ( like Infopop’s ) could indeed ruin a carefully planned design...

I was wondering if you could consider making that policy more flexible, providing alternative ways ( two or three would suffice ) to display the copyright notice, by some kind of compensation and under strict per-site approval.

Please note: I am not talking about removing the copyright notice. Far from that. I’m only talking about the feasibility of new and better ways to allow us to gracefully blend that notice on our sites... :)

What do you think?

[Edited by Aldreis on 04-20-2000 at 03:27 AM]

[James]

Aldreis,

We're fairly relaxed when it comes to displaying the copyright notice. Just so long as the copyright text is visible somewhere on the page, we're quite happy :)

I'll be updating the license agreement in the next few days to reflect this info.

All the best,

James

[Craig Antill]

Thank you James - that is the sort of policy which would lead to me adding a direct link to your site - as I do with Gossamer Threads, et al, at present.

The people who make 'that other forum' got my goat when they foisted a link upon us - it should be down to the site owner to decide, not to be told that it's OK to remove it if you can be arsed to do it every time you upgrade and, if you don't like that and post to that effect on our forum, we will close the topic or ban you from posting. grr...!

[Aldreis]

> Just so long as the copyright text is visible somewhere on the page, we're quite happy

This is really remarkable... Such a mature and rational attitude in a just-launched product! You have no idea of how much of user-related annoyance you just avoided...

My sincere congratulations to you and John... :D

[Stallion]

I emailed Ted about changing the (C) on my now-not-in-use forums at http://www.unreal2.net/tech

He was fine with it, so I don't know what everyone's talking about. I've never seen any Infopop employee say that it can't be changed in any way, it was mainly the over-protective users who felt it their duty to regulate.

[Menno]

Infopop is way to overprotective about that copyright notice
Kudo's to John and James for their excelent aproach :)

[Aldreis]

I already have a lot of contractually required links, which must be eminently visible on all pages. I managed to gather them in some sort of “links block”, for a cleaner look. I was wondering if I could combine the vBulletin link with the others. Something like that:
Forums by Jelsoft vBulletin (http://www.vbulletin.com)
Powered by Novell NetWare (somewhere)
Provided by Novell GroupWise (somewhere)
Protected by Novell BorderManager (somewhere)
Served by Netscape Enterprise Server (somewhere)
Could this satisfy your forthcoming requirements? Or did I need to put also the ©, year, related text, etc.?

[Music Global Network]

First of all I would like to say the software looks great, it looks like it fixes many of the problems that exist in UBB.

My question however is "Will VBulletin ever modify their code to link their software to the copyright notice?"

Pinning this issue down before deciding to purchase a license is important to me.

[Edited by Music Global Network on 04-29-2000 at 12:07 PM]

[Craig Antill]

Hey Musicman,
I think James answered that above... Welcome to the fun :)

[Music Global Network]

Craig,

That is the same answer Info-Pop gave me. Info-Pop is perfectly happy if I want to hack the link out. I do not want to have to hack out a link that is why I want to pin this down now before I decide to purchase a license. If they just keep the text that is fine, but no link unless it is a control panel option that allows you to turn it off. If it were a control panel option it would be best to tie the link to an affliate program that will let us share revenue.

[Craig Antill]

I think you're forgetting that vBulletin is powered by templates - in other words, you get to define exactly how you want the pages to appear - and what format you would like the 'powered by' to take.

However, i'm sure that the guys behind this script will clarify this for you...

[James]

We're of the opinion that once a customer has purchased a license, they are perfectly within their right not to have any actual clickable links back to vBulletin. That's why we have no plans to ever enforce a link back to this site.

All we ask is that the copyright text is inserted somewhere on the page. We're prety flexible about the actual text as well. So long as it says that the software is powered by vBulletin, which is copyright Jelsoft Enterprises Limited (or Jelsoft will do fine) we'll be quite happy :)

I'll be updating the license agreement in the next few days to state this info.

All the best,

James