Kestral wrote:Actually, places that are generally strapped for cash or are non-profit.
While that is true for most, there are plenty of forums belonging to rich companies and businesses that are powered by phpBB. What they do is simply remove the phpBB copyright from the footer of the forum (not illegal, but frowned upon) and they suppose it makes them seem more "professional" to their clientele, even though they didn't have one hand in developing the wonderful phpBB script.
Over at phpBB.com, the Team is creating a "showcase" of websites that use phpBB as their forum solutions. Almost half of the websites we've gathered so far are fairly large groups or companies that removed the phpBB copyright from the footer. phpBB is by no means a "cheap" solution (maybe monetary-wise, but not performance-wise), but many companies that do not want to spend money on a forum solution such as vBulletin end up just installing phpBB and removing the copyright. How kind of them.
On a lighter note, phpBB can do everything vBulletin can with a few simple MODs, and it's all free of charge. Why people continue to pay exorbitant amounts for a vBulletin license is beyond my understanding.