Category: Company and Organizations

Internet Brands v. xenForo – A Lawyer’s Opinion

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Take a look at a lawyer’s opinion on the potential case of Internet Brands v. xenForo.

Fair Use Excerpt:

After having read the claims made by Internet Brands for myself, the best that I can conclude is that (a) many of the fiery opinions contained in the flurry of comments are misplaced and factually and legally incorrect, and (b) Internet Brands considers Xenforo, which hasn’t even been released yet, a serious potential player in the forum and community software market. There isn’t much information available as to the allegations in the lawsuit against Kier, Mike and Ashley, all former employees of Jelsoft – the original company that created the “beloved” vBulletin software. Many forum owners are outraged that Internet Brands (the subject of at least one controversy) would actually “stoop so low” so as to sue these good people who brought them the software that made their magic possible. From my perspective, it is impossible yet to tell whether Internet Brands has been wronged by well paid former employees and is vigorously attempting to rightfully protect its property or whether the lawsuit is a frivolous claim by a big corporation with deep pockets designed to unfairly thwart the efforts of a new competitor in the marketplace that leaves an especially bitter taste in its mouth.

Read the full opinion

xenForo goes on sale

Veritas 4 Comments

For those of you who are sick of Internet Brands’s incompetence, and continued failure at meeting business requirements, xenForo, developed by former vBulletin developers Kier Darby, Mike Sullivan and former vBulletin business manager Ashley Busby, went on sale.

Go buy it. Enough said.

P.S. HURRY UP AND BUY BEFORE THE 100.00/license sale ends!

Internet Brands claims against xenForo

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If you have not read this yet, here it is. Internet Brands is suing xenForo for violations on intellectual property, and Kier, Ashley, and Mike for breach of contract, taking intellectual property, and unfair business practices.

Here’s what Internet Brands has posted.

Internet Brands today has commenced a lawsuit in the courts of England and Wales against Xenforo, and its founders, Kier, Mike and Ashley. The lawsuit is about these claims: infringement of our copyrighted intellectual property, breach of contract, and unfair business practices.

The suit is simple: we claim that Kier, Mike, and Ashley have infringed and violated contracts they signed with us to gain unfair business advantage. As such, Xenforo’s software unfairly stands on the shoulders of more than a decade of development by Jelsoft. Internet Brands owns this intellectual property.

In total, we are stunned by the actions of Kier, Mike, and Ashley and believe they must not fully understand the laws of copyrights, contract or business torts. Perhaps Kier and Mike think they have “refactored” enough of the code to skirt copyright law. Our analysis strongly indicates otherwise and we believe anyone skilled in understanding such things will concur. Perhaps they are of the misguided belief that because they created some of the vBulletin code as Jelsoft employees, they somehow have unique claims to that property. If so, that too is wrong. Kier’s and Mike’s work as Jelsoft employees was the exclusive property of their employer, and the former owners of Jelsoft not only paid Kier and Mike well during their employment, Kier was paid a handsome bonus when Internet Brands bought the business, although no such payment was required.

If the proverbial shoe were on the other foot and rather than buying vBulletin, Internet Brands had instructed our engineers to essentially copy the software, we would have been law breakers. But Internet Brands chose to play by copyright rules and bought the vBulletin intellectual property. And, in our opinion, no matter how Kier, Mike, and Ashley try to “spin” their actions, they have not. A key test for infringement is a determination as to whether a substantial portion of the underlying work amounts to an expression of the prior work. We believe we will be able to easily show that Xenforo is infringing under this test. We have numerous other claims against Xenforo that we believe are equally strong.

We trust that software purchasers understand the risks of infringement of copyright law and act accordingly. We have requested that Kier, Mike and Ashley refrain from selling the software while the issues, inclusive of our infringement claims, are heard in the courts. We intend to pursue our rights broadly and vigorously.
We consider Kier and Mike to be talented developers, but ones who potentially fail to grasp the implications of their actions.

We imagine that many of you in the community will have questions or concerns and we want to be as open and straightforward with all of you throughout this process as possible; however, since this matter is now being handled by the court system, we may be limited in some regards to what we can discuss.

Internet Brands

At the end of the day: Why am I not surprised?

Letter to vBTruth – Can You Help Me?

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We got another letter from one of our readers, who stumbled upon our site.

I’m toying with the idea to, like many people, grab a CMS/forum system and get an idea rolling. I’ve run a couple VB sites for a few years now FOR someone, and would like to actually get a taste of success (at the top most level) myself.

However, I’m trying to decide if VB is right for me. When 4.0 released we blindly of course planned to upgrade to it on a few of our sites – until we started reading all the complaints. So, we held off and are on 3.8.x still.

Fast forward to now – I’m trying to do some fast research to see if things have resolved a little, if perhaps the staff has come back or if the bugs are getting under control (from 10 reports a day to 800 as of now, for real?) or what. If staff has not returned, where are they now?

At any rate, I found your site during this process. I read the top few articles and decided to email you and ask for an update as the newest is 40 days old at this point. Please either in form of an article or in reply to this email give me your current take on the situation. Short or long answer. Is it any better, recommendable? If not – is there a competing product you would recommend?

Thanks,
Frustrated

Well Frustrated, I know it’s going to be tough to swallow, but the fact remains is things are changing, much slower than we’d like it, however significant change will not come for quite some time from where I stand. I’m looking as an external auditor, and there are risks still associated with staying with vBulletin.

From my perspective, we’re still having an extremely high attrition rate in staff. Just last month, Don Kuramura resigned from Internet Brands and joined Nokia.

My recommendation stands at this. Check out xenForo. It’s a new forum application that has just started up recently Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan, former developers of vBulletin, and Ashley Busby, former business manager of Jelsoft. I’ve thus had an excellent track record with the three of them and would not hesitate for a second to buy a license. I’m extremely impressed at what I’ve seen thus far, and I’m extremely interested in seeing what’s in store.

I will say that as soon as a proper importer has been tested for vBulletin 4 to xenForo, I will be making that jump, moving all my sites from vBulletin 4 to xenForo.

It goes on sale October 5 for $140.00. If you happen to catch the twenty four hour sale, you get to save $40.00.

I will point out, that you will be buying a license to participate in their beta. The bright side. At least you have a rough idea on what you’re buying.

Should We Get Refunds? Or at least compensation?

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This came from one of our readers. Feel free to comment as appropriately.

Hi, I, like many other vB4 license owners, want to get a refund. It would be great to make a post to give reasons why to get a refund as well as list of broken promises and so forth.

If they don’t give me a refund, I’ll talk to my bank to cancel the payment. Internet Brands deserves it and much more don’t you think so?

Well, what do you think our reasons are that can get us refunds?

Internet Brands has no clue – by x626xblack

Veritas 3 Comments
  1. Mistakes: There is a difference between mistake and bug. In a dynamic environment kinks in the execution and operation will happen and they can be worked out, and we accept those. Mistakes in the planning and decision phase are a sign of inexperience. The transition from Jelsoft to IB seemed simulate a Space Shuttle being handed to a group of 5th graders.
  2. Transparency/ Communication: only became an issue because way too much was broken and no one ever told anyone why or what was going on. If your paycheck comes every pay period and is the amount it is supposed to be, you are happy. It is when it is late or the wrong amount that you want to know who, why, and what is being done to keep it from happening.
  3. Communication: This falls along the lines of transparency. We are not so concerned with the What, why, who when things are running as expected.
  4. Give the customers a promise: At this point promises are empty. Make things right first. Fix ALL of the broken things before you add new things.

Suggestion: Someone needs to learn resource management.

VB.com needs to focus 100% of its resources into making vBulletin run correctly, and efficiently. Stop with EXTERNAL add on like FB Connect. In my opinion when VB added FACEBOOk CONNECT they surrendered Forum superiority to FACEBOOK and that is a tool that relies on FACEBOOK.

vb.org needs to be the place for add ons for external content. vb.org has a wealth of excellent add ons provided by users. There needs to be a section for official VB add ons like Facebook Connect…….. Oh, and tell the person that comes up with the idea for charging for any of these add ons to forget that notion…. Someone will suggest it.

Learn one lesson. if you were NASA you could glamorize, glorify, and take liberties with the truth and facts because only a hand full would know the difference. You are not. You are IB/VB and there are WAY too many End Users that have enough skill and knowledge to step into your job today and do an equal to or better job than you do…… They see right through your BS.

Quit lying. You are not good at it. I would rather see a post from a TEAM member saying, we broke this and it is being fixed than…… Some 1/2 azzed explanation about why it is supposed to be that way. when you KNOW it is not.

Lastly and most importantly……… Your team needs to meet with management and decide if VB is going to be about profit or customer satisfaction, yes you can be about both … BUT there needs to be one or the other that is TOP PRIORITY. If you polled End Users right now you would find our opinion is that your top priority is money. And while that is the prime goal for most all commercial products, you are in a somewhat unique situation where you have taken over from a group that was focused on Customer Satisfaction…. Which makes a bumpy road when quality and satisfaction take a back seat to profit.

We are trying and want to be loyal VB customers. You are not giving us much to work with. There is a difference between effort and result. Telling us you are working “so hard” to fix things is canned, and we could care less. We paid for results, not slaving hard work with a broken end product.

The Boat’s Sinking and They’re Taking it Easy?

Veritas 2 Comments

I’ve been reading the recent comments and posts on vBulletin.com and I’ve heard several accusations of vBulletin Solutions Leadership taking vacations.

Recently hired manager Fabian and Don both have been on a break in recent weeks, according to several posts by customers.

My question: WHY THE HECK ARE THEY TAKING VACATIONS AT A TIME LIKE THIS?!!?

This is absolutely insane. The boat is burning. It’s sinking and the people at the helm feel they can take their sweet time getting things corrected and righted? All the while, customers are piling into life jackets and life boats, but still waiting for the wonderful leadership at Internet Brands to lower the boats to save their lives.

As a customer, I’m furious. They should not be taking a vacation right now. They need to right the wrongs now. They need to get everyone on the same page YESTERDAY instead of now. Reading what people like PirateReports have been posting have suggested they have absolutely no idea what’s going on and that they can’t decide which direction to go.

Here’s an idea. How about bringing customers who actually know what’s going on instead of pulling people who know absolutely nothing about the software or community?

Time’s ticking, and I think it’s time Internet Brands senior management start paying attention to what’s happening here. It’s not just our butts on the line, but theirs.

Oh yes, there’s a conference call in two days. Anyone want to ask questions? In particular to their wonderful security flaw that made the headlines of TheRegister, ZDNet, BBC and others? And especially where the heck they are going?

Start ‘Splaining

Veritas 1 Comment

I want answers and I want them now. This is completely and utterly ridiculous. Absurd. A complete farce.

Never have I ever been so concern than I was two days ago. After watching this ridiculous security flaw unfold, and talking it over with Chronos, he made a strong point. HOW THE !@#$%& DO YOU SCREW UP A STABLE PLATFORM LIKE VBULLETIN 3.8?!?!!

We’ve had our fair share of vulnerabilities when vBulletin was under Jelsoft. They varied from Cross Site Request Forgeries, Cross Site Scripting Vulnerabilities and SQL Injections. NEVER EVER had I ever seen a vulnerability as bad as the one introduced by Internet Brands. A vulnerability that could potentially expose your SQL Username, SQL Password, SQL Server and SQL Port information? My God!

Vulnerabilities were at least contained strictly to the application itself, but now it has completely spread beyond the application and allowing script kiddies direct access into people’s database server.

I find that extremely unsettling. To err is human, to screw up a stable version of vBulletin requires Internet Brands.

More vBulletin Security Flaws – Yes Please, May I Have Another?

Chronos 2 Comments

As many are now aware, a recent security flaw was discovered in vBulletin 3.8.6 which could potentially allow a hacker to gain crucial information such as the MySQL username and password. Although Internet Brands was quick to release a patch and fix this issue, the question still stands – How did this happen?

No doubt the die-hard IB fans will say it’s perfectly normal and expected that software have some bugs, as it’s part of the process, and I agree with this to a point, but to have a flaw as big as this is completely unacceptable. We’re not talking about a minor bug, we are talking about extremely critical administrator information being potentially exposed to anyone in a few simple steps to take advantage of this flaw. How does this make it past QA, and if they are missing flaws this extreme, what else lies beneath that we have yet to discover? With vBulletin 3 being as mature as it is, should we not have higher expectations, or is that asking too much?

Bravo, you have really outdone yourself this time Internet Brands.

What do the rest of you think? Is this something that’s acceptable or are we blowing this out of proportion?

Internet Brands’s and vBulletin 4’s State of Affairs? – by DJ RRebel

Veritas 3 Comments

Just wondering what the opinion is of some of you long time members on what you feel about vB4?

Personally I was really frustrated with the way everything wasn’t fully thought through when they added the social networking a couple of years ago. I stood up screaming at some of the obvious problems and sure enough most of the things I mentioned would be problems turned out to be problems (but at least 90% addressed from what I can tell).

To say this left me rather frustrated was an understatement. I’m looking at starting a new site, but am seeing the same frustrating pattern as in the past. What really boggled my mind is that vB put a gold label on a product that clearly wasn’t gold! From what I can tell from some of the discussions going on in various threads is that vB4 still isn’t really a “gold” product.

I haven’t installed or played/tested it yet .. So my question simply falls to some of you regular participants here who can give me an honest opinion .. Is vB 4.0.2 what you would consider Gold?

Meaning are there so many bugs, issues and things “they are working to improve” that each update is more of a major upgrade needing to revert 30+ templates among other things?

I see complaints of search not being very user friendly, as well as the asset manager being frustrating to new end users .. are these claims legit .. or are they just the usual complainers from those who complain about anything?

I did look around and ticker around here a couple of months ago when it went gold and was frustrated that as much as I like vB .. vB4 clearly did not merit the gold status it was given and was still Beta in my mind. I could spend a couple of days tinkering again .. but at this point I can’t be bothered wasting the time and would like a simple paragraph or two from some of you summarizing your experience with vB4.0.2 and whether you feel it’s a product worthy of Gold status and thus worthy of my time in developing a new site around it .. or do you feel it’s not really “gold” and that I might be better off waiting a little longer for the product to stabilize a bit more?