Lets get the ball rolling….

[0ptima]

To show that we are serious about supporting VB 3.8 post EOL, we need to get the ball rolling.

Feldon23 raised some good points here
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...90#post2011690

In a nutshell, he suggested that we create a site with several admins using a free platform like wordpress. Having several admins would be better than only having one for a variety of reasons and a free platform would eliminate any $$$ problems. Hosting would be a none issue as this type of site would not require a lot of server resources or bandwidth.

I like Feldon23’s idea, but would replace wordpress with a free forum software to allow for discussions about fixes and to help others.

Please post your thoughts on this.

[Eriksrocks]

I think it's a good idea. I have a couple of issues though - I think that *just* WordPress would not be enough. The community needs to get involved and participate more, which means that we would need forums (as you mentioned). As far as the forum software, I wouldn't really care. However, I do have a completely unused and active 3.x license (and I did not buy it for this project - I've had it for quite a while), which I would be happy to use for this project. We should all discuss what forum software we want to use, etc.

As far as the domain and hosting... I already have the domain (vb3forever.org - and just registered vb3updates.org and vb3patches.org). I also have a shared hosting account that's well under capacity. I also have a nearly-empty VPS standing by, which I would be more than happy to use if the site outgrows shared hosting. Currently I'm working on getting an installation of Trac setup, in case we want to use that.

[Eriksrocks]

I agree that if we are serious we need to get the ball rolling. Hopefully everything should be up and running before vB 4.1 is released (when 3.8 officially goes EOL). We also need to discuss who these admins are going to be.
(Posted in two posts because of character limit.)

[Lizard King]

If things will roll , we should start from somewhere. It probably needs someone standing up and creating the exact place things needs to be discussed at.

[BirdOPrey5]

I think it would be stupid not to use 3.8, w have someone willing to give it to us for free, if that falls through I could kick in a little money for a used license, but we might as well use what we're supporting.

[BirdOPrey5]

Also I am totally willing to mod it- check for spam and whatnot- but I would think the admins should be saved for better coders than I.

[0ptima]

To avoid $$$ issues down the line, we should use whatever forum is free.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

I already said I'll share bug fixes. So I guess you can count me in.

[Eriksrocks]

@0ptima - I have nothing against any of the free forum software out there, but honestly I do not care what happens to this license. It's been completely unused and I don't have any other plans to use it now or anytime in the future. I'm not looking to earn or recuperate any money either. Basically, I want to use this license because it's been sitting completely unused for a while now. Personally I think it makes sense if we use the forum software we're supporting, otherwise I think everyone would be a bit puzzled when we're heavily advocating for EOL support of vB 3 and then they see the forum is run on phpBB or something.

We all know how great vB is and we have a license, so... why not use it?

[Eriksrocks]

Also, what are your thoughts on issue/bug-tracking software? We're probably going to want to set up some sort of bug-tracking system so people can report bugs, discuss those bugs, and then submit patches to fix them. JIRA (the software vBulletin uses) is out of the question because it pretty much requires its own dedicated server and we would have to apply for an open-source license, which probably would not be granted. There's also BugZilla, which while popular, is ugly and hard to use. I'm a bit partial to Trac because it's clean, minimalist, and displays diff/patch files beautifully (sample).

Keep in mind that we could always use Project Tools (assuming we use vBulletin for the forums).

[Ryan Ashbrook]

For Bug Tracking, I vote for Redmine or Project Tools.

[Paul M]

Seriously - a vb38 forever forum should be running on 3.8, otherwise its a bit of a joke.

[Lizard King]

Any bug tracker can work for me.

[mlx]

I'm sorry if this has been brought up elsewhere already, but what about running our own SVN repo? SVN access for vbforever developers and developing purposes only of course, but would that already be breaking all kind of laws and license agreements? I mean we'd need something like this if we want to get things going seriously.

And yeah, a vB 3.8 forever site should be running nothing else than vBulletin 3.8 as a forum software.

[Eriksrocks]

An SVN repository is not possible due to licensing restrictions, unfortunately. We would totally be breaking copyright law. We can all just get the latest source from the members area, so really I don't think it's that big of a deal.

@Ryan - in an idiot move I just realized that the PT release on vB.org is only for the 4.x branch. I submitted a support ticket and was told that PT for 3.8 will be released as an open-source addon on vB.org as well, and that this is supposedly being prepared right now. "Andrew is hoping to have it released over there by next week." So we could either wait for Project Tools or go with some other bug tracker, possibly Redmine (it does look nice and clean).

If you had to pick, Redmine or Project Tools? (continued in next post... stupid character limit)