Way Off-Topic Competition for vBulletin startup
 

Hi everyone!

When vBulletin first started (If i remember rightly 5-6-7 years ago, please correct if wrong) what types of competition was out there?

By the amount of free forum packages, that were good enough to use, how did you make it so that vBulletin became the "Forum Solution To Use" ?

Was there a lot of competition from the PhpBB Community?

Just a little interested in vBulletin's past.