Jelsoft's future

[Silver_2000]

Interesting News. Having been through a few acquisitions, the first question I ask myself is what is in it for the buyer ? Why are they buying the company ?
How can they use the intellectual property and customer base to make money ? What incentive do they have to keep things as they were ?

Look at the IB properties and try to imagine how VB will fit in there and help them.

As far as the Privacy issues the quote was regarding 3rd parties, well after being acquired is your Parent a 3rd party ?

Should be interesting to see how this plays out ...

Doug

[Comtech]

Here is my post from the vBSEO forums - just wanted to share my thoughts here as well.

The news is disturbing to say the least.

I actually feel that Jelsoft/vBulletin has sold out. The chance of a quick buck and they take it and run. I won't believe any of the PR work that they are doing over at vbulletins' community.

They have to spin the truth, otherwise the unhappy customers will drop or sell their licenses/not renew their expiring licenses...etc and jelsofts' parent company is then screwed.

They were probably told to make it appear business as usual. I see cutbacks on the way, replacements..etc.

The people we've known through the years to work on vBuletin - I see them being out of a job sooner than later. It happens in every buyout.

[Kier]

Major concerns of mine are:

• I will drop vBulletin like a rock if they encrypte any part of the php files and importers avaliable for view at present
• I will drop vBulletin like a rock if more calling home features are put in the code and or code that collects data on my forum

I would completely agree with this. If any ecrypted scripts are used or any kind of snooping deployed I will have no choice but to stop using vB. I guess this would also hold true for a large majority - so I really don't think it's gonna happen.

There have been no suggestions that we intend to do either of these things.

Given the added value vBulletin gains through plugins and hacks, it would be totally counter productive for us to encrypt the code.

The call home system is used largely for notifications of new versions etc. to the Admin CP - all the major pirate gangs know exactly where it is and how to remove it so it's not what we rely upon any more, and we have no intention of extending it.

[Kier]

Looking at the job advertisement that was posted by IB, it would appear that they're definitely brining in someone to manage... let's use the word liaise with Jelsoft and i believe it's for this very means.

I think you're reading too much into the job ad - IB run vBulletin on most if not all of their sites and I suspect they are simply looking for a web developer with vBulletin experience so that they can maintain and extend their own vBulletin installations, amongst other general web development duties.

[Comtech]

In our license agreement:


Although i can not look into the future or have detailed knowledge of the agreement between Jelsof & IB, our current license agreement does not even seem to allow for us to share your personal information.

PS Only James can give an official answer regarding this.

I will give you the only official answer & this comes not from any source, other than the laws of the united states.

Legally they are your parent company now. You work for them.
They will not be considered as a 3rd party player in this.

Thus, any spam, any snail mail campaigns they wish to send you regarding numerous sites, investments they have - they can legally do without any problems. That comes with a buyout. The parent company can't be considered a 3rd party for it owns jelsoft and vbulletin.

You elected to hear news about any jelsoft related product, and now it includes any product the parent company wants you to know about.

It can do this - will it? Only time will tell.

[cyburbia]

My short-term prediction: expect vBulletin marketing and their Web site to take on a more "corporate" feel. For instance, marketingese, jargon and buzzwords; stock photos of handshakes and smiling twentysomethings in businesswear gathered around a laptop in some boardroom; a more polished Web site similar to IPB, and so on.

[James]

Thanks for your continued comments.

Just to clarify a couple of points. One of Internet Brands’ core functions is software development to support their business units with tools and web applications – they are no stranger to software development, and fully understand the unique challenges that face Jelsoft as we endeavour to create and bring to market innovative products. As a point of note, the job description for the PHP developer predates this deal, and there are no plans for the development of vBulletin to be relocated to the Internet Brands offices.

What we bring to the table is expertise in software publishing and a core understanding of the community software market. Internet Brands brings investment into Jelsoft’s core processes, an experienced management team and existing, established, departments that complement Jelsoft – such as sales and marketing. Internet Brands has every interest in ensuring that our customers continue to be well served.

I understand the concerns about your personal information. Rest assured that we never have, and never will, distribute your personal information to any third parties without your express permission. The rules of the Data Protection Act expressly prohibit any such action.

Thanks,

James

[Neal-UK]

This was exactly my thought.

As for Jelsoft running with the same management/development and basically running as a subsidiary company, there are still people sitting in higher offices that will now be looking at the financial numbers, and forcing decisions to be made with the financial numbers, not the product quality in their best interests. This is how large companies work. You have highly paid people sitting in offices and staring at numbers. When they want the numbers to change, they put pressure on management to make it happen, whether it is truly in the best interest of the company or not.

What can this ultimately mean? More concentration on creating the future development of vbulletin with paid add-ons, and less on adding features to the stock product. In addition, it can very well lead to increased pressure to release products, so more money can be made, with less attention to quality and security.

There is a reason that vbulletin has been the most secure forum software up until this point. It is only speculation, but I fear that an ownership change like this will only jeopardize this.

I hope for the best, but I am expecting the worst.

I agree. I liked vBulletin as it was just that, vBulletin.

I'm not that convinced that this was a good idea and time will tell.

[cyburbia]

Question: will any software development be outsourced to developing nations? I prefer a vBulletin that is developed entirely in North America and the UK/EU.

[Reeve of Shinra]

I understand the concerns about your personal information. Rest assured that we never have, and never will, distribute your personal information to any third parties without your express permission. The rules of the Data Protection Act expressly prohibit any such action.

James,

Is IB considered a third party? What about the other sites that fall under the IB umbrella? I am confident that our information will never be shared with third parties however I - and many others - are unclear about how our information will be shared and used within the new organization this acquistion created.

Thank you,
- John

[Kier]

Question: will any software development be outsourced to developing nations? I prefer a vBulletin that is developed entirely in North America and the UK/EU.

Why the prejudice against developing nations?

Regardless, there are currently no plans to out-source vBulletin development to anyone. The vBulletin development team remains unchanged.

[greggish99]

My take on this is that Internet Brands and IdeaLab saw what Facebook has done with opening up their platform to third party developers, and now MySpace and other social networks considering the same strategy. The social network as the web platform is the hot thing now, and I think IB/IL decided that buying an existing social platform such as vB and then extending it is the cheapest and fastest way to get into this game. I really think they have no interest in Jelsoft as a going concern, but rather they just want to use it's product vB to build their own version of Facebook. Time will tell.

[---MAD---]

Question: will any software development be outsourced to developing nations? I prefer a vBulletin that is developed entirely in North America and the UK/EU.

Sort of racist I would say. Where-ever it is developed, they won't just hire a random person to do it, they will hire professionals.

What I do wonder is how developement for vBulletin 4.0 is going and if its even progressing or haulted (or even started) until the blog addon is released.

[Wheels]

Why the prejudice against developing nations?

Regardless, there are currently no plans to out-source vBulletin development to anyone. The vBulletin development team remains unchanged.

Many people in the U.S. have seen their jobs outsourced, including my cousin who's website job he had for 10 years was just outsourced to India. Anyway good to hear that the current plans don't including that.

[Yours Truly]

There is all this mention of them having most of their websites run with vBulletin
, if this is the case i really can't see this being a bad problem.

Looking through some of their sites they are pretty big forums that have been going on for a long time, so more than likely they have a vast amount of experience with vBulletin from its early stages so they know the system as well as most of you claim to do.

So it's not really some stranger company coming in hearing that vBulletin is the leader with Bulletin Boards. And trying to force their ideas upon vBulletin not really knowing what vBulletin is about.

It is a company with a vast amount of experience in this field. So at the end of the day when vBulletin was going to be bought out (was pretty inevitable really) then this must have been one of the best companies you could have asked for to buy out vBulletin. Like i say they must have a vast amount of experience with vBulletin since most of their sites use it instead of IPB.

What i'm trying to say really is this is better than some money grabbing company coming in with no idea of what vBulletin is, how it works and what it is used for. This is a company who must have masses of experience with the product looking at the age of some of their sites with vBulletin on.