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back to article Forumware giant vBulletin sues ex-devs (again)

Internet forumware giant vBulletin has filed a second lawsuit against its former lead developer, who recently launched his own forum platform with the UK-based startup XenForo. With the new suit, vBulletin claims copyright infringement, breach of contract, and misappropriation of trade secrets. XenForo and its lead developer, …

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  1. Squirrel
    Stop

    Streisand effect

    If the software was written from scratch, then there's nothing in UK/EU law to stop them releasing a competing product.

    It boils down to whatever was in their original employment contract. As for stealing documents, it's very difficult to prove unless you have video evidence or independent witnesses.

    Maybe its just the American way, sue any body and every thing if it even dares compete with you. Fortunately the company is in the UK where you can't get away with that nonsense.

    [IANAL]

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    1. Gordon Pryra
      Reply Icon

      Who cares?

      Does the world really need more forum software?

      Or is this "new" product even easier to set up multiple "forums" on multiple hosted servers aimed purely at creating backlinks to game the search engines?

      Yawn

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      1. ViagraFalls
        Reply Icon

        iCare

        As owner of multiple vBulletin licenses, I certainly care. Back in the days when I was looking at the proper software to run my forums, vBulletin stood out for a few reasons, including being supported by a proper company, and being complimented by numerous modifications and styles that allow me to tweak and tune my forum so it stands out from the crowd.

        Then vB4 was rolled out, and it's a disaster. 8 months after going gold, it actually started to resemble what I paid for almost a year ago by now.

        XenForo is what vB4 should have been, and as such (to me, at least), it certainly is a welcome new player on the forum market.

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  2. David 141

    Move along...

    "took with them virtually every type of document a competitor would need to enter the market and unlawfully create a competing bulletin board software program."

    In other words, none.

    Bulletin boards aren't exactly rocket science, and back in the days before the Internet kids with modems used to write BBS packages.

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  3. David 146
    IT Angle

    Trade Secrets?

    Almost every teenage web developer will have spent a few months at some point in their lives implementing their own blogging engine or web forum software; it really is trivial and there's no real secret-sauce (or real 'computer science') involved. All the fancy-shmancy stuff that requires more than half a brain, such as spam detection, is not specific to internet forum software and is hardly unique to vBulletin.

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  4. Robert Hill
    Pirate

    Internet Brands...

    LOL...Internet Brands bought vBulletin because they thought it would be a nice cash cow for them. Immediately upon buying the company, they radically scaled back the investment and development on the next version of the product, the features of which had already been publically announced to their user base. Instead, IB decides to greatly water down the enhancements, and then promise the rest "over the course of several longer-term releases". In short, whenever they might decided to finance the work.

    So the best of their development team leaves...because they could see the writing on the wall. Apparently IB thought that their old dev team would be happy working at Wall Mart, or really do anything other than, say write bulletin board software (which is all they know, having done it for so long).

    Now IB is faced with the introduction of a far superior competitor, written to be what the promised version of vBullitein was SUPPOSED to be...and on a newer framework.

    So of course...you can now see the genesis of this lawsuit.. IB has realized that their "cash cow", their golden goose...may not be so golden after all. Reading the web forums, there are HUGE numbers of old vBulletin customers that cannot wait to switch to the new product.

    What IB wants to say is "you kids were supposed to go quietly!!!". Instead, they are leading the insurrection...and are likely to make IB's investment return look exceedingly poor...

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    LOL

    "took with them virtually every type of document a competitor would need to enter the market and unlawfully create a competing bulletin board software program."

    And yet the system they wrote is far superior to the utter shite that is vB4, even though they allegedly copied from it and vb3!

    I'll be switching to XF from vB once it exits beta. IB, you won't be getting any more of my money after this debacle.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    cheaper

    Its cheaper as well!

    Hope they get the plugin system working as well as VBulletin though. That's what really makes good software.

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