Love the forums, angry about Google Ads

I support a handful of clients who have been using the WebWiz forums for years.  One in particular runs a very popular board that has over 30,000 posts and 1200 (very active) members. 

We upgraded her board to V7.95 last night and we were surprised to see that the board was now showing Google Ads at the top and bottom of the page, undoubtedly benefiting only Mr. Corkhill.  This new "feature" was not publicized anywhere that I can find...it's certainly not listed in the Revision Log (beyond a vague reference to "new ads file") or in the list of new features in the new version.  

More appropriate might be a large red sign: WARNING! WEB WIZ FORUMS NOW REQUIRES MORE THAN JUST LEAVING OUR LINK INTACT!  YOU MUST DISPLAY ADS FOR US ON YOUR SITE IN ORDER TO USE OUR SOFTWARE WITHOUT PAYING A LICENSING FEE!

It's one thing to give the software away as linkware and require that we leave a link to WWG at the bottom of the page.  I don't mind doing that, in fact I'm happy to offer up the Google juice because it's a well written piece of software. 

But dropping in Google Ads to earn advertising revenue from other people's websites is going too far, particularly when the only way to (legally) get rid of it is to pay an "ad/link removal fee".  This is too drastic a change in the licensing model to be "slipstreamed" in. 

Effectively, this amounts to hijacking revenue generating space on a website that's not under your control, and to do it with no advance notice was a bad, bad idea.

If you made it optional ("Enable Google Ads if you'd like to have your site benefit the developer of the forums") that would be a different matter, but this is just wrong.  If you had properly communicated in the documentation what the change was, that would have been more acceptable.  I don't appreciate being surprised by it, nor do I appreciate you changing the rules of engagement without any real notification.

My $0.02, for whatever it's worth.

I appreciate your situation, and the openness with which you've shared it. 

What frosted me about the Google Ads is not so much the fact that they were in there -- I respect your desire to be compensated for your hard work -- it's that it came as a surprise.  Admittedly, I'm not a frequent visitor on the support forums at WWG (testament to the basic stability of the software), so perhaps I missed some long discussion about this, but I doubt it.

There are A LOT of sites running this software (Google shows 4.3 million hits on the phrase "Powered by Web Wiz Forums" -- don't know how many actual sites that corresponds to, but it's more than a couple) -- use the community to your advantage. 

I'll bet there are a lot of capable developers who would assist with development work (if you're at all interested in sharing the load), and I suspect that at least some of your users would be willing to pay a "support" fee annually or something like that to get advanced features or more access to suggest changes, or something.

If you ask, I suspect that the community of users will help find a way to create revenue around this thing so that it won't go away.  In the light of day, more creative solutions may come up than you would ever have imagined.  Hey, if vBulletin can support an entire business around their product at $160 (or $85/year), why not Web Wiz Forums?

Again, thanks for your candid response.

Thanks, Bruce.

The free linkware version now also has Google Ads intergrated into it. These are removed by purchasing the link removal key, which has been renamed to Ad/Link Removal Key.

At the moment it is only a test to see if it's viable, but I am thinking about changing it so that the free version has ads in it at the bottom and/or top, with the ads comming from this site. Then if companies want to advertise within the software they can purchase advertising directly from Web Wiz Guide,