Wolverine
02-03-2006, 06:34 AM
Here is an email I got this morning from vbwar and my reply to it. For newer members it might not make a lot of sense but I will follow this up with an explanation. First off,while they sound the same and pretty much look the same vwar and vbwar are two different programs. We use vwar on this website to manage our clan matches.
On to the email. :)
Apparantly you didn't remove me enough from your system. I haven't had access to this "paid" subscription for some time. From looking at your forums I am glad I moved away from vbwar as you seem to have a way of taking peoples money then dissapearing, perhaps to work more on your "non existant" big brother call home and make sure nobody is cheating you out of your hardly earned vbwar income code, lmao! Please delete my message board account as I have no use for it and do NOT want to receive any more emails generated from it. This is funny enough to deserve a front page news post, tee hee.
cheers
vBWar - CMS Forums wrote:
Hello,
Your access to the paid subscription "vBWar 3.0 Plus" is about to expire.
To extend this you must visit http://www.vbwar.com/forums/subscriptions.php
If you do not extend your subscription access will be removed.
Yours,
vBWar - CMS team
Now for the follow up explanation. The following is from the post I made in a private forum but I think now it deserves a public look! :)
About vwar and vbwar
Some of you are probably confused about the recent addition of vwar to the site. I will do my best to explain.
vbwar is based on vwar and is a very nice script but I have recently had problems with it and its author.
History time.
When vbwar for vbulletin 3 was being developed it came out that the files would be encrypted. I was not at all pleased with this as it meant I could not see what code was in the files. Jo and I spent a lot of time trying to debug the vbwar for vbulletin 2.x and I felt it was a bit of a slap in the face for him to stop supporting that version which was quite buggy and then encrypt the next.
I was pretty vocal about it on the vbwar site. With time the dude gained my trust enough that I went ahead and purchased the script when it was ready. We used the script for a couple months but then some not so nice things were discovered.
1. Dark Wizard (the script author) claimed that vbwar never calls home because your copy has hard coded domain info inside that makes it only work on your domain.
Everyone knows that when we moved the site to a new server recently vbwar quit working. I put in a trouble ticket and his response was "Fixed...for future reference please let me know before hand that your moving to a new server."
I of course replied "So if this script is not caling home, then how did you manage to fix it? I changed no vbwar files and you dont have access to my site, at least I think you dont, starting to wonder what all is going on in those encrypted files now."
2. In the same time frame that this was unfolding I was trying to view threads on the vbwar site when it appeared their site went down. It was down for a while and when it came back up something happened that I bet he didnt forsee. While his site was down NOBODY'S VBWAR WORKED and a bad license error page would pop up. This basically means that the script calls home quite frequently and if the authentication site is down, so are you.
I was enraged over this and when I brought him to task on it he lashed out. He said in the support forum "You have been a thorn in my side about the encryptiong since the beginning. You have your license now and I am through with you."
Along the way as I hammered him he would change his story. First as you recall it was that the script does not ever call home. Then, when pressured he said that it only calls home once during installation to authenticate. Then near the end he said it only calls home once a month. Seems like this dude is basically a liar and is paranoid beyond belief. He usually fell back on his main argument every time he was called out on this. He would say something like "This is the way of the future, get used to it." instead of actually answering questions that had been brought to him. He used the word paranoid to describe my issues with this if you can believe it, seems my paranoia was justified dont it?
Anyway, his last act was to ban me from his site including the area of the site where customers get support. He recently returned an email I sent asking why cant I get to the support area to get the product support I paid for. He basically told me I am locked out and will stay that way until I agree not to cause him any more trouble.
Now I dont know about y'all, but where I come from you do good business based on honesty and integrity. I dont think either of these values are part of this guys business model. He has lied too many times now and so I have absolutely no trust in him.
Now please understand that coding an advance php script is no easy task and I certainly dont blaim a person for tyring to protect thier work, but to take our clans money in good faith and then spit in our faces really really burns my ass beyond repair.
Encrypting files is not unheard of, but as I told him, it puts an extra amount of strain on the author to be squeaky clean and honest. If he were up front about it I probably would not have an issue. After all, vbulletin calls home every time you access the admin control panel, but then, it never claims not to LOL!
So, I am working on getting vwar installed and as integrated as quickly as I can. It probably will never be as integrated as vbwar, but personally I really dont care. I feel much better about a script that I can trust. I can view all the files and see every function of vwar since its not ecrypted. The best part, its free! Oh we will probably make a donation at some point to the dev team, but I think they deserve it much more than MR Dark Wizard does.
On to the email. :)
Apparantly you didn't remove me enough from your system. I haven't had access to this "paid" subscription for some time. From looking at your forums I am glad I moved away from vbwar as you seem to have a way of taking peoples money then dissapearing, perhaps to work more on your "non existant" big brother call home and make sure nobody is cheating you out of your hardly earned vbwar income code, lmao! Please delete my message board account as I have no use for it and do NOT want to receive any more emails generated from it. This is funny enough to deserve a front page news post, tee hee.
cheers
vBWar - CMS Forums wrote:
Hello,
Your access to the paid subscription "vBWar 3.0 Plus" is about to expire.
To extend this you must visit http://www.vbwar.com/forums/subscriptions.php
If you do not extend your subscription access will be removed.
Yours,
vBWar - CMS team
Now for the follow up explanation. The following is from the post I made in a private forum but I think now it deserves a public look! :)
About vwar and vbwar
Some of you are probably confused about the recent addition of vwar to the site. I will do my best to explain.
vbwar is based on vwar and is a very nice script but I have recently had problems with it and its author.
History time.
When vbwar for vbulletin 3 was being developed it came out that the files would be encrypted. I was not at all pleased with this as it meant I could not see what code was in the files. Jo and I spent a lot of time trying to debug the vbwar for vbulletin 2.x and I felt it was a bit of a slap in the face for him to stop supporting that version which was quite buggy and then encrypt the next.
I was pretty vocal about it on the vbwar site. With time the dude gained my trust enough that I went ahead and purchased the script when it was ready. We used the script for a couple months but then some not so nice things were discovered.
1. Dark Wizard (the script author) claimed that vbwar never calls home because your copy has hard coded domain info inside that makes it only work on your domain.
Everyone knows that when we moved the site to a new server recently vbwar quit working. I put in a trouble ticket and his response was "Fixed...for future reference please let me know before hand that your moving to a new server."
I of course replied "So if this script is not caling home, then how did you manage to fix it? I changed no vbwar files and you dont have access to my site, at least I think you dont, starting to wonder what all is going on in those encrypted files now."
2. In the same time frame that this was unfolding I was trying to view threads on the vbwar site when it appeared their site went down. It was down for a while and when it came back up something happened that I bet he didnt forsee. While his site was down NOBODY'S VBWAR WORKED and a bad license error page would pop up. This basically means that the script calls home quite frequently and if the authentication site is down, so are you.
I was enraged over this and when I brought him to task on it he lashed out. He said in the support forum "You have been a thorn in my side about the encryptiong since the beginning. You have your license now and I am through with you."
Along the way as I hammered him he would change his story. First as you recall it was that the script does not ever call home. Then, when pressured he said that it only calls home once during installation to authenticate. Then near the end he said it only calls home once a month. Seems like this dude is basically a liar and is paranoid beyond belief. He usually fell back on his main argument every time he was called out on this. He would say something like "This is the way of the future, get used to it." instead of actually answering questions that had been brought to him. He used the word paranoid to describe my issues with this if you can believe it, seems my paranoia was justified dont it?
Anyway, his last act was to ban me from his site including the area of the site where customers get support. He recently returned an email I sent asking why cant I get to the support area to get the product support I paid for. He basically told me I am locked out and will stay that way until I agree not to cause him any more trouble.
Now I dont know about y'all, but where I come from you do good business based on honesty and integrity. I dont think either of these values are part of this guys business model. He has lied too many times now and so I have absolutely no trust in him.
Now please understand that coding an advance php script is no easy task and I certainly dont blaim a person for tyring to protect thier work, but to take our clans money in good faith and then spit in our faces really really burns my ass beyond repair.
Encrypting files is not unheard of, but as I told him, it puts an extra amount of strain on the author to be squeaky clean and honest. If he were up front about it I probably would not have an issue. After all, vbulletin calls home every time you access the admin control panel, but then, it never claims not to LOL!
So, I am working on getting vwar installed and as integrated as quickly as I can. It probably will never be as integrated as vbwar, but personally I really dont care. I feel much better about a script that I can trust. I can view all the files and see every function of vwar since its not ecrypted. The best part, its free! Oh we will probably make a donation at some point to the dev team, but I think they deserve it much more than MR Dark Wizard does.