Programming Forums - Forum Reader Software

Hmm, actually that does look kind of interesting. I'm put off by the fact that it's not open source but a very shallow google/skim around doesn't reveal any open source alternatives to it. I think if I thought this sort of thing was worthwhile I'd probably just write my own though and GPL it. Too much else to work on for that just now though.

One thing that would make this easier to write is the fact that there are basically maybe five very major forum systems out there that account for 95% of all forums (these numbers are off the top of my head; don't be fooled into thinking I've actually done any proper research here!), so even considering complications like different versions and templates, it would probably be reasonably easy to cover the most important players.

The two main catches are (a) minor forum software is not going to be supported, particularly the extreme case of in-house forum systems that some sites have written for themselves and (b) the software would rapidly degrade if not supported as the scraped web forum software changed and broke the scraping code. Both these problems can be fixed with fanatical and obsessive maintenance (of the sort that antivirus software maintainers demonstrate) but there's nowhere near as much money in this idea as there is in the world of AV and anti-malware so I suspect it will fall by the wayside at some point if it stays closed source.

I'd say, in my opinion, it might be a fun thing to try (since they're offering free licenses at the moment) but I don't find it exciting enough to risk running a binary from an unknown website out there on the 'net that won't let us look at the source code.