If i buy a website that has an invision power board forum on it, will I also have to buy a license for it? The owner said he wasn't aware of any licensing issues and said he got the forum before the sold licenses. So can i just transfer the files and set everything up? or will I have to buy the license?
Technically, that is only a trial version of IPB and cannot be used "indefinitely"...but the rules are vague. The only way that you can use it period is if you got it the way that the current owner has mentioned - downloaded from IPS when they were giving out free trials...I don't know how this works since you yourself did not get it from IPS, but you are having it passed on to you from somebody who did...technically this would be distributing the software, which I do know for a fact is not legal. All in all, the best thing to do would be to ask IPS themselves using their pre-sales support, but I can almost guarantee that they are going to say that you can't do this legally without purchasing a license...which is probably the case.
I wouldn't even use 2.0.4 as there are about 5 security patches in it, these allow people to login as admin within 2 minutes. Just buy a licence its only $60