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Why is Invision so popular?

Asked by Trix.Neo,

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Grand Master

Tomi

Posted
Posted

No, it's true. Go to any version 2.0.x IPB site and type index.php?ipscheck=1 to the end of the address and you will get their license key.

eg: http://www.getpaidforum.com/forums/index.php?ipscheck=1

I'll agree with primexx. That's not a backdoor at all. They can't take over your board at all.

You probably have NO clue at all how 'ipscheck' even works. It doesn't even fall under the category of backdoor, as 'ipscheck' doesn't give you access to the board. If there's no license, it returns 0, otherwise it returns a number generated somehow by the license key that you inserted. That used to be how 2.0 worked, now in 2.1 they have a different method of doing it. And also, if I remember correctly, your downloads in the customer centre include your key automatically [don't ask me how, some kind of script they have].

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Collaborator

kingkong118

Posted
Posted

For me IPB has always been the greatest, it looks good, handles well, it can be skinned and modded easily. It has great features too.

I've tried phpbb for example, and the database messes up all the time, it looks crappy, doesn't have alot of features, the admin side is wierd.

:devil:

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Grand Master

chconline Veteran

Posted
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Posted

They have backdoors to 2.1.x AFAIK. I've seen them actually SHUT DOWN a forum by deleting all posts and creating a single section with a post that says "BLAH BLAH who resides at BLAH BLAH is pending legal action" and at the bottom where it says Licenced to: says "This board isnt licenced" etc.

Back on topic, IPB is nice. Ive used it since 1.2 :D Fully licenced here too.

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Grand Master

Tomi

Posted
Posted

They have backdoors to 2.1.x AFAIK. I've seen them actually SHUT DOWN a forum by deleting all posts and creating a single section with a post that says "BLAH BLAH who resides at BLAH BLAH is pending legal action" and at the bottom where it says Licenced to: says "This board isnt licenced" etc.

Back on topic, IPB is nice. Ive used it since 1.2 :D Fully licenced here too.

I think you're talking about William Hook's forum [as that's the only place I heard of it happening]? If so, I remember it being said a fake.

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Grand Master

Tomi

Posted
Posted

how can an there be back doors when you can look at the code. wouldn't it be stupid for them to have back doors when everybody can see it?

Yeah, there are quite a few coders who've looked through the code and know it from the back of their hand, no one's seen any kind of backdoor.

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Grand Master

TruBD

Posted
Posted

No, it's true. Go to any version 2.0.x IPB site and type index.php?ipscheck=1 to the end of the address and you will get their license key.

eg: http://www.getpaidforum.com/forums/index.php?ipscheck=1

i just tried that out with my forum and i get this:

<result>0</result>

You do not have permission to view this page.

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Grand Master

Tomi

Posted
Posted

No, it's true. Go to any version 2.0.x IPB site and type index.php?ipscheck=1 to the end of the address and you will get their license key.

eg: http://www.getpaidforum.com/forums/index.php?ipscheck=1

Wait, I just re-read your post. Oh man, I'm laughing pretty hard right now. I guess you've never seen a license key before, as I know it's not xxxxx,yyyyy format, instead: xxxxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxx-xxxxx-LIFE

i just tried that out with my forum and i get this:

IPS changed how the ipscheck tool works, now they have some kind of different unknown method.

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Experienced

cbosdell

Posted
Posted

I'm not faulting their product. IPB is really good software. But it's the fact that the company were stringing users along right thoughout the version 2.0 beta and those few days which version 2.0 final was free, that 2.0 was going to always remain free. Right until the very end. I can understand wanted to release a pay product to be a business, but it' the way that they did it was deceptive. Those that didn't download 2.0 final in the first day or so were left high and dry because distributing 2.0 final from somewhere other than IPS was illegal. And even if you got 2.0 final for free, you wouldn't be able to get security updates for that.

In addition to that, they made a complete cover up of what they did by deleting posts and threads on their forums that made a mention of what they did, deleted posts that quoted that "IPB will always be free" from the past (posts dating back before they were even considering making it pay only), and BANNED PAYING CUSTOMERS that questioned it. That's right! BANNED CUSTOMERS that PAID for the privlege to be a member on their board. Highly illegal because they had their licenses revoked without violating any license agreements, and were asking questions on the forums that they paid to be on, which they are quite entitled to do.

Also IPS were chums with the Neowin staff at the time. IPS has previously been a Neowin sponsor to provide the Neowin servers at a time when Neowin were on the brink of shutting down for good (Neowin's previous hosting was too expensive for the Neowin admins to afford. In fact, IPS' sponsorship was the reason why Neowin converted from vB to IPB at the start of their sponsorship). IPS were a great company when they were generous enough to sponsor such a large hosting requirements. Because Neowin had a this good rapport with IPS (even though they were no longer sponsors at the time), the Neowin staff did a moderate amount of censorship on the issue themselves (Not nearly to the extent of IPS, no bans, just forbidding any new topics on the issue).

I don't know if this is still true or not, but IPS even built a backdoor in version 2 so that they could remotely access(and then disable or deface) boards that were not legally licensed. They could check the license keys remotely by adding ?ipscheck=1 to the end of the index.php.

To answer your statement, they could of announced that they were going to make it pay-only before they did it so users had a chance to understand that "IPB will always be free" is not true and whether they want to purchase it or not. I'm not comparing it to vB, I don't know about vB's business practices but in any case I wasn't recommending/comparing vB. I was making a statement about IPS on their own merits. And yes I would agree that phpBB is an inferior product, but that wasn't the point. As lazy as phpBB are, at least they arn't going to screw you.

In short, I'ld say that IPS is definately NOT a company to be trusted, and not the kind of people I would want to ever give my money to.

Too true. IPS are lying scum and so is Matt Mecham who in particular is a liar to never be trusted!

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Mentor

low

Posted
Posted

1. Build a relatively good product or at least equal to competition.

2. Release it for free.

3. Wait until it has gathered enough people so it becomes 'critical' to them.

4. Go fully commercial, drop all support for existing 'customers' and leave them hanging unless they pay you cashola!

5. ...

6. PROFIT!

But that's not priceless, priceless is having fanboiz roam forums defending their actions for you! :yes:

Every buisness is about making money... i think invision did not expect to get so popular and when they did they saw this as a chance to still be popluar and also make a nice profit off their well known product... and i don't think people were too turned off by this because i don't think their is another board program out their that is better than invision... it has just about everything you need... so paying for it i don't see would a huge problem to exsisting customers of their program...

low

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Experienced

cbosdell

Posted
Posted

Every buisness is about making money... i think invision did not expect to get so popular and when they did they saw this as a chance to still be popluar and also make a nice profit off their well known product... and i don't think people were too turned off by this because i don't think their is another board program out their that is better than invision... it has just about everything you need... so paying for it i don't see would a huge problem to exsisting customers of their program...

low

it wouldn't have been such a big deal if they had said for example 1.* is going to be free still but 2.0 and all future releases are paid only and the only 1.* updated will be any critical sercurity fixes. But no they are decietful and released 2.0 for free for a bit (which yes I have) and then take it down and say its paid only.

the issue is even if people depend on it a lot of people dont have the $60 or so a year to spare.

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Grand Master

Tomi

Posted
Posted

it wouldn't have been such a big deal if they had said for example 1.* is going to be free still but 2.0 and all future releases are paid only and the only 1.* updated will be any critical sercurity fixes. But no they are decietful and released 2.0 for free for a bit (which yes I have) and then take it down and say its paid only.

the issue is even if people depend on it a lot of people dont have the $60 or so a year to spare.

So, if you were a programmer, and your software was at version 3.0, would you still work on the 1.x version of your program? No, because it'd be taking away from your time to be working on 3.1, and it's also saying "Hey customers, look - the free version is still being worked on, why even bother buying the newer version? Even if the free version isn't as good, it's still as useable and safe as the paid version, screw buying it!".

And they even gave you a chance to download the final version for a day, most companies would NOT do that. Consider yourselves lucky to even have a chance; it's rare.

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Experienced

cbosdell

Posted
Posted (edited)

So, if you were a programmer, and your software was at version 3.0, would you still work on the 1.x version of your program? No, because it'd be taking away from your time to be working on 3.1, and it's also saying "Hey customers, look - the free version is still being worked on, why even bother buying the newer version? Even if the free version isn't as good, it's still as useable and safe as the paid version, screw buying it!".

And they even gave you a chance to download the final version for a day, most companies would NOT do that. Consider yourselves lucky to even have a chance; it's rare.

You twisted my words. What I said was any major security holes that need fixing. Its only the right thing to do if you are going to for years say it'll ALWAYS be free but anyways thats not what happened so why dispute it?

Invision Board Through 1.2 I believe was completely free then with 1.3 they made it a free unlimited trial thing which was one step closer to paid. Then with 2.0 they spent months hyping its release and it was released and a few hours later the free unlimited trial download was taken down and it was announced they were going paid only and all the free people don't matter,

So Basically -- Matt Mecham and everyone at Invision Board are evil scum liars who try to cover up or ignore the fact that they are but -- Invision Board is simply the best product around. :no:

Edit: Oh yeah I Just found this little quote of his :D :

Yes, we're pushing our paid services harder, but we're still offering a free product that is fully functional. This has always been our vision and it's not going to change. "They" said 1.1 wouldn't be free, it was. "They" said 1.2 wouldn't be free, it was. "They" said 1.3 wouldn't be free, it was. "They" say 2.0 won't be free - and it will be.

How many times do we have to prove "them" wrong?

Edited by cbosdell
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Neowinian

Telemacus

Posted
Posted

First of all, I'd like to invite all the people who have written negative comments about Matt Mecham to do a thourough research (using google) of his career so that you can get your own personal and unbiased opinion. Mine is not unbiased...

Personally, I don't trust people who make defamatory comments on someone simply because they had one bad experience.

I'm an IPS customer and I've followed up Matt's work for years, and I can honestly say that he is one hell of an outstanding individual.

I think Matt has made an incredible contribution to the internet comunity since the early days of "Ikonboard", which, I remind you, was a perl based forum that he created from scratch. This forum was completely free throughout its history and, at the time, it was one of the most robust perl based forum systems that you could find.

He spent thousands of hours developing his software and I can confirm that he spent incredible amounts of time on it: I'm not sure whether Matt actually slept more than 5 hours a day in those days... but I doubt it.

At the time Matt used to tell people that Ikonboard would always be free, and he kept his word. Hundreds of thousands of people all over the planet were able to use his software and thousands of webmasters were able to build communities where communication, what a great word, was possible.

(It's somewhat ironic that his the software that he created can also be used to put him down with allegations which are so completely unfair.)

When Ikonboard grew more than was originally expected, some "unethical businessmen" took advantage of Matt's lack of experience in the business world, and basically stole all his work with a contract which he signed, but whose contents I'm not sure if Matt understood correctly: he lost Ikonboard and never made a cent out of it. Read my lips, I repeat: He was exploited, they stole his work and he never made a cent out of it.

Perhaps this experience changed Matt's outlook of life... maybe it made him realize what a business was all about and how nasty things can get when you find some unethical people in your way.

Matt had to start from scratch. He could have given up and nobody would have blamed him, but no... he was a fighter and came back with invisionboard.

The early versions of Invision were free. It is true that in those days "always free" was still part of Invision's motto, and one day it did change...

The allegations that Matt lied to everyone are a bit absurd. Ok, perhaps "always" was an ill chosen term in their motto, but Matt had been giving us, the community of people who used his software, more than we could ever have expected. It is completely unreasonable and unfair to expect someone who had given so much to others, to abide by a statement he had made a long time ago. Matt had evolved as a person and from a professional stand point, he had given up his job and invision was... well... his whole creation and his whole life.

What happened with the release of version 2 has not been explained correctly, but to claim that it was a machination to get people hooked on it and then tell them that it wasn't gonna be free, well... it's quite silly. Invision made a business decission, it wasn't popular and some people felt disappointed, but there was a huge comunity of coders who created mods and gave support and this made the last free version of invision a perfectly viable alternative to version 2: those people could still use the software if they wanted to.

Today Invision board is, in my opinion, the most robust, dynamic, professional forum software you can possibly get. It has been coded with an amazing logic which only exists in Matt's mind, and that's part of of the software's success.

IPS is growing and hiring new programmers and workers every year. New products are currently being developed and will be released over the next few months and will make a webmaster's life a lot easier...

Of course they'll make mistakes... sometimes they'll let you down, others they will surprise you with their assistance or the release of a new product... you have to put everything in the scale and decide if it's worth it. In my case, it is definitely worth it and I'm not surprised that amongst others, Neowin, with over 5 million posts on its database, still uses it... [ I'm sure Neowin has had a lot of offers from other forum developers... ;) ]

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