Please see a copy of a post below, posted here on the VB forums. I'd be interested in DP members' opinions on this issue.
You do not have to upgrade to vb4. You have a lifetime licence to vb3.X .... whats the problem? If you want to upgrade to 4, you pay the $. Its not any more expensive! With vb4, you do not pay the annual fee you did if you wanted upgrades to vb3 ... that works out the same price as the current vb3. The only whiners about the vb4 price are those not very good at maths! I think the new pricing structure is great. If you do not like it, take your business elsewhere.
Thanks for your reply Agent000. The problem is that VB themselves advise that in the interest of security, you should run your forum on the latest software version. Forum owners who are serious about their forums need to be on the latest versions, regardless of what software they are using. It will now cost me $170 per licence, to upgrade to the latest version of VB. Plus, I understood that I was purchasing a lifetime licence for VB, not a lifetime licence for VB3.X. Not true, we are in difficult financial times and there is a big difference in paying $60 per year for a licence and paying $170 upfront. Plus if VB upgrade to a new version, i.e. V5, within the next three years, it will be more expensive for customers. That's a fair comment for first time customers. But I own three VB lifetime licneces and have been a VB user for many years. My forums are heavily customised and the cost and disruption of switching to a different forum software would not be insignificant. I'm a loyal VB customer, I paid for my licences and for annual membership and now VB are saying to me that I have to pay $170 to upgrade to the latest version of the software.
Look at it like Microsoft does... when you paid for Win98 you needed to pay upgrade to WinXP, when you paid for the upgrade to WinXP ya still needed to fork over cash for Vista (which likely required you to buy a huge machine so you would not need to wait 35 minutes to startup). Though, personally I do not like how they went about things... but then we are no longer talking about the community friendly Jelsoft and are now talking about some corporate sellout...
When I purchase Microsoft products I understand and expect that I will have to pay for the new versions. When I purchased owned VB lifetime licences I understood that upgrades were free, once I paid the annual membership fees. Now I'm being asked to pay $170 to upgrade a licence that only cost me about $160 around 2 years ago. A lot of it comes down to managing customer expectations I suppose.