Hey everyone

Since we now offer Advanced Super Forums (vbhosting) I thought I'd mention a few things as in the legal stance we take on this issue, and what YOUR legal rights are.

First off our stance on this is that it is NOT illegal as it does not in anyway violate the End User License Agreement (EULA)

However, Jelsoft (www.vbulletin.com) believes that it does under this sentence
Sadly for them, they do not get that if they claim that this sentence here makes vbhosting illegal, so does giving moderator status over ANY forums, or even allowing any new admins on your boards. This statement here basically says you cannot give out the SOFTWARE, it does not say you cannot give out forum access, or admin access or anything as such.

Legally speaking, they cannot shut down a board for running ASF or for even hosting it (vbhacks). And, as people have pointed out before they cannot just "change" a binding contract (the EULA) without your permission AND agreement. If they do change it to cover the vbhosting hack (ASF), then you have the right to state no I will not honor this new agreement and part ways WITH a refund if you have a leased license for the months you did not use. Do not be fooled by the fact they have a line at the bottom stating "Jelsoft reserves the right to modify these terms at any time." Course they do, but you have to be notified and given a chance to agree or part ways.

Hopefully I've eliminated some apprehension about using ASF (vbhosting) and if anyone has any other questions please feel free to reply

__________________
- Paul Dobbins
Lighti Networks

Update on this, as i was contacted by Jelsoft for a legal issue regarding one of my clients;

Jelsoft will simply refuse to offer support - and the licenses are not renewed when you have a leased one - for any admin that install this hack, regardless the EULA. one of my hosted clients received that alert when someone at Jelsoft was informed the ASF was installed on the site...

even if Jelsoft refuse to support any client with ASF installed, i can assure that my own clients will continue to receive support from my company (well known vB coder btw) ...

The reason given by Jelsoft was that they don't do support on ANY modified boards. They are right, it's stated that if we modify our board, Jelsoft will not offer support on the modified parts, but on untouched systems... (this is the illogical part, they offered vBulletin.org to be the hack section of their system, and they don't support the work that goes on the road from that site.)

this is not to be debated... Jelsoft have all the rights if they don't have to modify their EULA, and they have stated they would not support any board with hacks on them... so they can't do a thing against the ASF, but they can against all hacks.

good luck for the ASF, ;)