When To Purchase (vB5 coming soon?)
 

I sort of stumbled into developing for vBulletin back when vB 4 wasn't out yet, and I haven't purchased a license since. I just use my clientss licenses to download the files, and do my development work with them, and this has worked out fine for me so far.

However, I'd like to be able to participate in the community more (both here and at vBulletin.org), contribute some plugins, and engage in discussion about vBulletin programming practices and such, so I'm all set to buy a vB4 CMS license.

To me, this is a big cost, because it's not strictly necessary, and I'm only willing to invest that kind of money if vB4 will have the same kind of longevity that vB3 had. Since we're not even at 4.1 yet, I thought I had no reason to worry, but apparently vB5 is set to be released soon?

I can't imagine why the dev team would be working on version 5 when version 4 is still quite a mess with all of the bugs. We haven't had a stable 4.x version yet. This concerns me on two fronts. 1, If vB5 is in development, I question the sanity and intentions of IB. 2, If vb5 is coming out soon (within a year or so), I can't justify purchasing vB4 now, unless there is some kind of heavy discount or automatic upgrade plan in place.

So, I'm looking for advice!

PS: Since I develop for vBulletin, no other forum software will do. So, please no dire warnings and suggestions to switch forum software.