jaint said:
IPB 2.5.5 is available for free, just google the trial version which IPB released for free. It's available and its completely legal (not all functions, limited in terms of rss, and bots). Or use IPB 1.3 full and legal.
Or use phpbb (
http://www.phpbb.com) or SMF (exofire.net) will host your forum for free
Nothing above IPB v2.0.0 (Trial) is available without a license. Anything above v1.3.0 such as v1.3.1 and v2.0.0 are also not completely free. They are unrestricted and have no time limit BUT they are only for evaluation purposes.
They DID release some ENCODED trials after that, but they will stop fuctioning after a certain amount of members or posts, and you can't install mods.
Also, it is illegal to redistribute IPB and it is illegal to download it from anywhere other than invisionboard.com or invisionpower.com, so finding them on Google and downloading them is illegal.
Even v1.3.0, the last FREE version of IPB can NOT be legally distributed. You may use it if you downloaded it from the sites listed above when it was available, but if you download it from anywhere else you will be violating x10Hosting's TOS by hosting warez.
Simple Machines Forum is a great free software.