My Honest Opinion

[Imakuni?]

i still want a free trial

[ManagerJosh]

so someone can what... use it forever? Forget it.

[shorty]

I find this a strange thread. Especially as the starter appears to have the bit between his teeth on this.

Jelsoft is a professional software company with professional goals. Delivering top quality software of any kind requires money & development time. The Jelsoft devs don't do it for free and VBulletin has never been marketed so.

Im reading this thread and Im thinking "Hmm... why would anyone want a trial version?". Then I clued...

Non expiring trial ala the old IVB model (that is now discontinued).

So that allows lots of sites to run VBulletin legally but without stumping up the funds.

An interesting request but in my opinion, fatally flawed. So the thread starter says "zend encode it". How does that justify letting it be used for free? For life?

"No support, zend encoded" still means "free vbulletin with limited use" in my book and that effectively cheapens the product overall for those who have paid money for the license. That LOSES sales for Jelsoft as many sites don't hack and don't require support, so they will take the "trial" product instead.

You can't ask adobe for a "functionally limited, trial" copy of Photoshop that never runs out. It's unfair to ask Jelsoft to do the same. I feel Invision (bad example but..) discovered this and that is probably part of the reason they dropped the free trial product.

[Imakuni?]

it would be setup so, no support is given, and no mods can be installed. maybe a 30 day expiration or something.

[adguru]

it would be setup so, no support is given, and no mods can be installed. maybe a 30 day expiration or something.

But, did you not say that you admin'd a site using vB?!?! Why would you need a trial after that ?

[Imakuni?]

one of my own, my friend... one of my own

[adguru]

one of my own, my friend... one of my own

What I am trying to say is that you are requesting Time Limited, No Support & No Mod allowed version to test drive it. Why would you want a feature limited version when you already have tried the full version [the site you admin] ?

[Imakuni?]

so i can play around with it without worrying if im gonna break it or not.

[Zachery]

Thats what the admindemo is for You would be hard pressed to break it

[Andy Huang]

I think Admin demo is plenty enough. The only reason people seem to want zend encoded version / trial is to try to use the software, and admin demo is plenty enough. There's really no point in making a trial / free zend encoded version to lower the over all price of the software...

[cirisme]

$160 is just $13 per month, and only for the first year. If you set aside $15 per month in less than a year you'll have enough to buy your own license. If you can't pay even that how do you plan to host a forum?

[Shadow Duelist]

True.

[James Kojiro]

Trust me, the price vBulletin is for is worth paying. It helps pay the great people whom make vBulletin possible, the domain name, Jelsoft's building (assuming they have one), servers, and all that. Plus, we have to think about the tools going into creating vBulletin. vBulletin ImpEx developers must buy a heck of a lot of forum software like Invision and WoltLab to understand them and thus improve ImpEx. The youngest software developer here, Scott MacVicar has 4 computers for vB usage, 2 of them running Windows. A free version of vBulletin would be nice, but it would eventually lower the quality of the vBulletin product and thus lose more and more prominence. I am completely against a free version of vBulletin, and anyone whom truly loves this software would be against a free version too. You really scare me when you don't think these things through.

[dndog]

This thread is Ridiculous. Jelsoft has no reason to lower their cost. Or offer free trials.

Hello - they are dominating the market right now. Whats in it for them?

-dndog