# Licensed based Forum software ?



## senouf (Nov 16, 2008)

Congrats on the great implementation of a long awaited forum for the freebsd community directly sponsored by freebsd !
However, how is it that you chose to use a licensed based (non BSD or GPL-License) forum software (vBulletin) when there are many BSD / GPL Licensed discussion forum software ?
Keep up the good work


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## trasz@ (Nov 16, 2008)

Quality, I guess.


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## dvl@ (Nov 16, 2008)

Please, let's not have a thread about licenses.  It contributes nothing.


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## oliverh (Nov 16, 2008)

It's the Rolls-Royce among the board software.


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## ken (Nov 17, 2008)

dvl said:
			
		

> Please, let's not have a thread about licenses.  It contributes nothing.



I think the question is valid.  Obviously the choice was not made on license but rather other technical considerations.  Having managed several boards in in the past, I, for one, would be very curious to know, as I assume a pretty thorough evaluation involving other major offerings such as SMF, Phorum, etc. took place before settling on current choice. 




			
				oliverh said:
			
		

> It's the Rolls-Royce among the board software.



If by Roll-Royce you mean offering the greatest plethora of feature bloat options, I would agree, but not so sure if you're including factors such as, for example, performance.  Last I tested, Phorum kicked vBulletin's but in this department.


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## oliverh (Nov 17, 2008)

>factors such as, for example, performance

Take some of the biggest communities like cgsociety (http://forums.cgsociety.org/) and lets have a look, they are using VB. Because even with 3000-5000(!) users at the same time it runs very smooth. And you can break something like phpbb at once. As a matter of fact VB works with such big communities, can you say the same from every FOSS-solution out there?


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## ken (Nov 17, 2008)

oliverh said:
			
		

> >factors such as, for example, performance
> 
> Take some of the biggest communities like cgsociety (http://forums.cgsociety.org/) and lets have a look, they are using VB. Because even with 3000-5000(!) users at the same time it runs very smooth. And you can break something like phpbb at once. As a matter of fact VB works with such big communities, can you say the same from every FOSS-solution out there?



In the interest of addressing any possible confusion, I was NOT referencing "_every FOSS-solution out there_" but rather providing Phorum as specific example in the context of performance.  Been a couple years since I put them head to head though so your mileage may vary.  I'll leave the reader to ponder why I omitted specifically mentioning phpbb above... §jr


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## brd@ (Nov 17, 2008)

vBulletin was chosen because lots of admins I know swear by it and they run large communities. As you can see lots of the unneeded stuff in vBulletin has been disabled.


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## ninjaslim (Nov 17, 2008)

The BSD and general Unix community have always been known for pragmatism.  Fighting over licenses limits progress and is far from practical.


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## darkshadow (Nov 20, 2008)

oh I think commercial is better than gpl at least you will find better code ( standard , performance and stabilty)


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## lme@ (Nov 20, 2008)

darkshadow said:
			
		

> oh I think commercial is better than gpl at least you will find better code ( standard , performance and stabilty)



Why do you use FreeBSD then?


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## vivek (Nov 20, 2008)

This is not a new issue, other open source project also use VB such as official Ubuntu forum. Also, open source is about freedom, freedom to see code and/or modify it as per your requirements. You can charge money as long as you are giving out source code, IMHO.


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## MartijnAtLico (Nov 20, 2008)

I have seen many phpBB boards crumple once the traffic picked up. To me, phorum doesn't look like it would scale much better. So kudos to the admins for doing the right thing and going with a reliable choice


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## Ico (Nov 22, 2008)

vb indeed is the best choice imho too, hands down.


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## rliegh (Nov 22, 2008)

Actually, I think SMF is probably a better choice, but VB works well enough and -to be blunt- the choice of message board software and/or licenses is a *really* dumb thing to quibble about.


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## darkshadow (Nov 23, 2008)

*what*

Why do you use FreeBSD then? 
!?? freebsd is not gpl ,freebsd is world wide project controled by 200 commiter it has standard and test


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## Eponasoft (Nov 27, 2008)

SMF and VB are pretty neck-and-neck in many areas, but VB has a much longer track record established, while SMF is still sort of the new kid on the block. I only use SMF personally, but I can't dispute VB's long history of stability and usefulness.


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## tomh009 (Dec 4, 2008)

vivek said:
			
		

> This is not a new issue, other open source project also use VB such as official Ubuntu forum. Also, open source is about freedom, freedom to see code and/or modify it as per your requirements. You can charge money as long as you are giving out source code, IMHO.



And that's exactly what VB does ...


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## whatsthatwingfor (Apr 23, 2009)

tomh009 said:
			
		

> And that's exactly what VB does ...



wait, so, I *AM* free to take money for my version of vB's source code?


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## Carpetsmoker (Apr 23, 2009)

No, you're free to buy a vB license and then modify the source as you see fit, you can't go and re-sell the modified vB software obviously.

This is, basically, what free software is about, free as in free speech, not as in free beer.


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## whatsthatwingfor (Apr 30, 2009)

vBulletin isn't libre software. I can't believe anyone here is pretending not to understand.

If it were free, I could share my modifications with anyone, and they could use them. Whether they pay me, vBulletin, or anyone else or not is utterly moot.


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## DutchDaemon (Apr 30, 2009)

As said: free as in free speech, not free as in free beer. Don't pretend _you_ don't understand that 'free' has varying meanings, both linguistically and legally.


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