You can see the changes, they're already live on our Support Forum which was linked in my post. Our full launch isn't until April. We have many clients that opted to upgrade early even while we are still in beta.

Our software does not rely on client side security. That IS all done server side. I didn't make any statements to the contrary in my original post.

disclosure: I'm the President and CEO of ProBoards, my company creates forum software.

From TFA: "When I looked at forum software again after leaving Stack Exchange, I was appalled to discover that after four years virtually nothing had changed."

This is a great sound bite, but unfortuantely is just not true. There is a lot of innovation in the forum space going on. A few recent software releases come to mind that offer new, unique functionality. XenForo, vBulletin 5, and my company's new forum software ProBoards v5 that launches on April 29th.

I can't speak in depth to our competitor's products, but I can tell you how we have taken forums to the next level:

-Live Search. Most pages have a search box you can type in, and the threads/posts update live on screen.
-AJAX pagination - switch between pages without needing to load a full new page.
-Integrated Notifications. We push content to you, you shouldn't have to seek it out.
-Integrated mobile site
-Clean, simple UI (while keeping all functionality available)
-Enhanced privacy. More control over what you see and who can see you.
-Activity feeds for staying up to date with your friends on the forum
-Single signon for all ProBoards forums with the ability to easily switch between forums
-WYSIWYG editor
-"Conversations" instead of PMs -- you can have multiple people in a discussion
-Better moderator tools that make it easier than ever for mods to get stuff done with fewer clicks.
-We launched a new section on our homepage that shows you all forums you are a member of and information such as how many new messages you have, notifications, if any of your participated topics were updated, and more -- many forums, all on one single page.
-and a whole lot more.

You can test these features in our new software yourself at http://support.proboards.com./

My main point is this: There is plenty of innovation going on. Go look for it.

This simply is not enough. From what it sounds like, they'll sign the bill as long as the DNS portion is removed. This will still kill many user-generated content websites on the Internet.

Putting aside issue of him admitting to using GPL'd code (which clearly makes him fall under GPL rules), how can this apply if he himself is not selling code linked to WP?

He is selling a template, the user is the one who links it into the WP system. If he distributed WP+the template all in one package I think you could say it was linked, but as it stands he is selling stand alone software that won't do anything until it becomes linked into the WP system by the end user.

So technically he's just distributing software he wrote (besides his copying of code) that itself is not linked into any system. Then the user takes that code and links it in. So isn't the end user the one who is GPLing the code (maybe in violation of the template author's policies?)