Invision Power Board is Fully Pay
That’s right ladies and gents, IPB from the great (sarcasm) folks at IPS, have moved their once promised “always to be free” bulletin board to a fully paid licensing system (read here).
You know, I used to be a really big fan of IPB. Once I got vBulletin, I lost touch of IPB for a while (because vB is truly superior, IMO) but I still visited their forums to see if the possibility of IPB being better would ever come to pass. I can tell you now, even if IPB ever became better then vB, I still wouldn’t switch.
IPS’s business plan is just totally pathetic. The first time I really started to think that is when they broke their promise (yes, promise!) to keep IPB free. Companies grow, but it still bugged me. And then they try and sugar coat it or something by saying an “Unlimited Free Trial”, which was in really small font, I might add. So since version 1.3.1, IPB has technically been non-free software (your trial ended as soon as you got a serious community and wanted to use IPB).
Then you get into things like IPB vs. vB vs. phpBB discussions or some complaint about something they don’t like. The mod team see’s peoples opinions invalid when they go against the company, so they often get deleted. And now, the main product feedback and suggestions forum is members only so no non-members can even comment on the new “focus”. Try posting about it in General, go ahead, your topic won’t last five minutes.
Ahh… So all that rambling about how much I really don’t like IPS. I never thought I could hate a company so much to write an entire blog post on it. I’ll just end it by saying IPS is on my “never to purchase anything” list.
If you use IPB, good for you, no need to stick up for them by replying to this blog. I might be evil enough to pull an IPS and delete your post (kidding, I believe in free speech. I simply mean your post will not mean anything, so you needn’t waste your time replying.)
September 27th, 2004 at 6:57 pm
Nice rant. Do you feel better now chris? Anways they’re wrong for breaking the promise of being free. I hope alot of users loose their loyalty for them. Teach them a lesson.
September 27th, 2004 at 7:04 pm
I would post on their forums about how much I hate the way things are being managed, but it will just get deleted. Even if I say it politely, even if I mention a slight “I don’t like the new move”. Hell, if I mention “IPB” and “free” in the same sentence I’ll probably get banned.
And yes, yes I do feel better. A member on vB.com has already blew off IPB because of this move (but at the moment can’t afford vB so is searching for other options).
September 27th, 2004 at 7:20 pm
what’s your thoughts on http://invisionfree.com/ ?
September 27th, 2004 at 7:25 pm
AFAIK, InvisionFree is being shut down by IPS for some sort of license issues. IPS has their own type of hosted forum deal (which is a lot buggier, less features, and less members), which is probably where they are going to host their 15-day hosted trial to potential customers.
September 27th, 2004 at 7:47 pm
linkage
Posted right out of Matt’s mouth, and a nice Google cache link to it too.
Busted.
September 27th, 2004 at 9:18 pm
I smell a cover up. You don’t think IPB works for the government?
September 27th, 2004 at 9:34 pm
Naw, IPB works for the devil.
September 28th, 2004 at 3:25 am
The only free board i like is phpbb and maybe the one created for mambo {2 shoes factory or something like that - can’t exactly remember the name though!}
I will have to start getting VB once I migrate from being a wannabee to a real webmeister I guess, though I’d need to hire an expert to do the templating etc.
September 28th, 2004 at 12:19 pm
Templating is easier than it looks, just time consuming.
September 28th, 2004 at 5:05 pm
Yeah, the 300 or so templates make it look hard, but you only ever touch about 20 of them.
September 30th, 2004 at 5:47 pm
Some more discussion to eat up: WHT on “Matt Mecham is a liar” and SitePoint on code theft.
//edit
Seems SP has deleted the thread about Matt stealing code from GPL’d sources.
October 1st, 2004 at 3:13 am
Well I never like IPB, but playing devils advocate for a moment, lots of free software and internet services have gone the way of paid services only. You may find yourself in that position one day. Mind you I dont know the full story and what was promised etc, so I cant really comment.
October 1st, 2004 at 1:48 pm
It’s not anything to do with them making their services paid, it’s them breaking a public promise — of deceiving everyone. Then they try and cover it up, even to the extent of deleting all old posts from their forums. Their business model is just sneaky and pathetic.
October 5th, 2004 at 7:37 am
unfortunately you live on planet earth where promises are made to be broken… what makes you think Microsoft is doing when it comes to “false advertising” on all its O/S amongst others…
October 5th, 2004 at 4:16 pm
You are telling me things I already know and missing my point entirely. My point isn’t that they are doing more evil things then MS or any other company, it is that they are now sneaky and conniving where they were not before.
I feel like IPS used to be a company I could trust and I could congratulate their growth — now, they are nothing better then a sneaky money-driven company and I anticipate their downfall.