This user has been denied support.
In the German support forums (mybboard.de) several users reverted this change.
This is because before, in MyBB 1.4.4, their forums looked like this:
And after the update to MyBB 1.4.5 - which they considered a bugfix, no new features, i.e. no big changes - release, it looked like this:
And they did not even notice at first, because only guests see it that way, and the forum admin who made the update is of course a registered user so... users of the forum complained to their admins about it, and the admins were pissed and complained in the german mybboard.de forum about it, etc.
From your point of view maybe this was a simple bugfix, from the users point of view it's a big change they knew nothing about before upgrading, so it's understandable that they are a bit miffed.
The reason the admins removed the 'can view thread' permission for guests, prior to MyBB 1.4.5, was that guests should be allowed to see that the forum has something to offer, but force them to register in order to be able to actually read it (i.e. show them the meat but not actually give it to them). It's a popular measure, even employed by big forums like theadminzone.com (although it's slightly different there, they allow guests to read 5 threads, then force them to register).
I don't like forums that do this, but until 1.4.4, for some forum admins the can view threads permission was useful for this. Since 1.4.5, removing the can view threads permission leads to the forum showing up as empty, and I don't know if that's useful to anyone.
Personally I think the best solution is to enable 'can view threads' always, but remove 'can view forum' if you want a forum to be private.
