Well when I first heard that InternetBrands.com, a stockmarket listed company had taken over vbulletin.com, I thought to myself, how long before they start to hike up the prices.
Many times, companies that pay large sums to buy other companies, try to recoup their purchase price by lifting prices. I have used vbulletin.com for many years now, and was not too happy about the price hikes, but I will pay them. At the moment, they do hold a lot of large forum owners to ransom. What was once a lifetime licence, is now just a licence for that current stream, for example vbulletin 4.0 stream, and those prices have increased as well. There are no yearly maintenance fees.
If you run quite a few forums, these costs can easily add up. The real question, to try and assess whether this is reasonable, is how long will it be between major version releases, that is how long between version 4.0 and 5.0? And how far will they go with price increases?
There could be an opportunity for a new forum developer in the market.
On the positive side, I guess increased costs, could be seen as an increased barrier to people buying the software. For now, I will continue to use vbulletin, for the lack of a better option.