Obviously forum software is a big thing. For my website, I wrote my own forum software from scratch. It uses MySQL and Perl, and its pretty f***ing fast, compared to other software (UBB, Ikonboard), etc. Would there be any sort of "market" for a thing like this? I know UBB and Ikonboard make money (I''m sure), but how would you go about actually selling it? Thanks for the input guys, I love this forum.

There is a market for it although rather small and limited.

The fact is you have PHP bulletin Boards which works a wonder and are free. When there is free software that does basically the same thing it really does dampen it for you.
This can explain why Linux has such a huge following. Then once you get past the free software already available you then have the free services like delphi45 boards and ezboards.
Then you have the free, open source ones availalbe at planetsourcecode.com which are not half bad but need work.

What you need to do is offer something unique about it apart from speed, then you need to market it very carefully and get potential Web Hosts and developers to know about it... then again alot of web developers who have the time will make their own customised one.

Hope this helps give you an idea of the whole picture.

Darjk has made some good points.

Every free bulletin board supplier I know of sells advertising space on their users' forums. I think that if you distribute your software freely, with a limitation such as advertisements and maybe something else, you will be more successful at selling upgrades than at just selling the entire package.

But then again, I'm no expert.

[edited by - alex mcandrew on July 18, 2002 11:23:48 PM]