Rick,

There seems to be a lot of concern about the licensing side of things. I appreciate that you are unable to tell us how things will be and what the costs will be but I would like to clarify one point ... Am I right in thinking that any existing owner of WWWThreads actually does own their copy of the software and that the annual renewals are simply to allow you to download and own the latest versions as and when they appear. If this is the case, and I am not advocating this as a course of action until Infopop have proved themselves one way or another, then surely the existing owners could simply walk away with their current version (or the latest version that their license allows before it expires) and then maintain the software themselves. For example, many of the improvements and additions are actually hacks before they are included in the official release. What, if anything, is proventing someone from funning their own WWWThreads, sorry UBBThreads, site where hacks are stored so that people can maintain their own version of the software, including or excluding what items they want? Am I right in saying that the only thing we would be prevented from doing would be installing a newer version of the software as released by Infopop, ie a pirated version?

Just wondering ...

Yes, that is correct. Nobody will have to upgrade if they don't want to. This is one thing that I wanted to stress is this really does give everyone a chance to see what is actually going to happen. Nobody has to just jump ship and stop using the program. Give it some time and see what happens.

There will be a site dedicated to hacks that the guys from UBBDev are going to create. It's not owned by Infopop. You'll see that Charles Capps has registered here and he is one of the guys involved in UBBDev. I'm planning on spending some time at the new site as well and I'm hoping that the majority of users that like to create hacks and use them will come on over to this site once it is up and running.

Rick, I was wondering that is there anything changed if those of old time W3T users were simply using their own hacks or modify their own copy of W3T and they won't get any support under the new license from Infopop (like the others had mentioned in another thread here) ?

Thanks for the info. I, like most of the other here I guess, am more than willing to give things a chance but with my annual renewal coming up in a few months I do need to think about the future too, especially since funding the site comes out of my own pocket.

I'm interested to see what the UBBDev guys get up to (I haven't had a chance to visit them yet) and I just hope that some of the community spirit that exists here carries over into the (more) corporate world.

At least you have a few months to see what they will do. Mine is up this month.

Scream,

How can I find out how much time I have left on my license?

If it has expired without my noticing and I'd like to renew, can I still do that?

Will we be given a chance to renew our license prior to the move to InfoPop in order to save money in the event of a price increase?

Will there be a grace period for renewal or an offer of longterm extended licenses for current users?

I'd just like to know whether I should scramble now...or if it's safe to wait for the announcement next week.

Bobby Beamer
[][email protected][/]

Just dont change the database file names so we can continue upgrading code with existing databases as we have in the past. The second you change the schema or naming convention I see problems. you can name your source code files whatever you want just keep the database scheme intact. you do not have to have ubb_posts, www_posts is just fine..

I thought this could be customized as many of those open source scripts did if there's a new setting to define the table that W3T should be working with.

You can go into the licensed users area and click on your customer information link. This will let you know when the license expires, if it has not already. The actual move won't be taking place until Thursday, which means you have until Wednesday to renew your upgrade contract at the current price.