My point of view

[FourthWorld]

The ideas here are noteworthy on many levels, but to be honest not the least of which is that most of them come from those relatively new to LiveCode, and so those folks can't be blamed for not knowing that nearly every single pricing or packaging option descibed in these pages has already been tried before.

I can appreciate the desire for lower pricing. I'd like to pay less for just about everything I buy, including software.

It may well be a very strong testimony to the company that they make it appear that LiveCode is easy to produce.

But think about it: where else can we find high-level scripting with integrated GUI components as inherent language elements on as many platforms?

I've looked, and come up empty.

It would seem that, when faced with such an expensive task, most companies just throw their hands up and don't even attempt it.

LiveCode delivers it. And no matter how easy they may make it seem, it really is an unusually expensive software to produce. Other companies may offer some mix of the elements and/or platform coverage that LC does, but not all of it. There is a reason for that: it's really really expensive.

For the most part the various proposals for pricing/packaging offered in these pages have been attempted in the past, and had they provided sufficient revenue to cover the cost of developing LiveCode we wouldn't be having this discussion today.

In brief, this is not a simple challenge to solve.

That said, all companies can improve their performance, and LiveCode Ltd. is no exception. Any good new ideas backed by solid research would be welcome.

Many years ago there was a member of the community who became rather well known for complaining about many aspects of LC's marketing and operations. He was quite strident in his opinions, and somewhat relentlessly so. But ultimately it was revealed that he had many years of actual demonstrated experience in exactly the sorts of areas he was so insistent about, having worked on successful operational enhancements with many large companies including Apple.

His name was Bill Marriott, and after submitting a proposal for specific operational objectives he was hired by the company to implement them. For all the areas still ripe for improvement, Bill's work was very instrumental in moving LiveCode forward in many key areas, from quality control to marketing. Tragically, Bill passed away some years ago, but the legacy of his work continues to pay dividends for all of us to this day.

There are still many areas where operations can be improved, and if anyone here has a specific proposal I would encourage you to submit that to the company where it can be acted on, rather than just dropped into a user-to-user forum to be read only by those who don't run the ship.

If you do submit a proposal, like any other business planning it's helpful to include the background research supporting the plan, and a CV outlining demonstrated success in relevant areas so the team will be able to readily distinguish the proposal from the many others they get frequently.

Just as Apple forums are filled with suggestions of how to run that company, the folks at LiveCode have no shortage of opinions coming their way. Many of these contradict others, and most account for some aspects of the business problem but not others, so truly good ideas with a solid business case behind them will be easily distinguished and quite welcome.

A proposal supported by good research from those with demonstrated experience would stand out from the rest, and while I can't say it'll result in a contract as it did with Bill Marriott, a good proposal meeting those basic ingredients will stand a good chance of having a positive influence.

[Ormente]

Thanks for your answer Richard.

Sadly i have no miracle solution, and i doubt there is one. LiveCode have a very difficult equation to solve, that's a fact.

There is no marketing scheme universaly applicable, backed by research or not. And where there is research it's mostly misleading, as solutions are allways heavily dependant of the context. What makes the success of a company might as well kill another!

LiveCode have many qualities, but it remains a fringe product. A fringe product i like a lot. The main point is to drive it to become more mainstream. Going open source have been an interesting move, and probably a good one... but it's a double edged sword. It opens LC to a larger audience, and may drive more users to it. But in that context it also become more difficult to make users pay. Who is willing to pay ? Mostly professional users, but those are hard to convince by a fringe product (And raising price is not enough to make it look serious). The bigger they are, the harder it is to convince them. So, no need to be a marketing genious to see that indies and small shops are the future of LiveCode, at least in the short/medium term.

I don't have the final word about pricing, but the current practice seems really bad to me. I understand that the company needs money to stay alive and go forward, and i'm ready to pay, as i allready did in the past despite not using LC professionaly. But i wont in the current state business. And what is worse is that i'm convinced that i'm not alone, that the current practice is harming livecode (the company)... and so i have hard times being confident in the future of the product.

That's a bit a chicken and egg problem

To make more indies and hobbyists pay, LC have to keep the price relatively low, but also have something worth paying for. Closed source is not enough for most of them. The learning material (academies...) is a good thing to justify the price, but not $400+. I'm convinced a price tag of 99-199 (for a year) could be appealing to a lot of users, including hobbyists. That could include learning material and remove the "open source" obligation, but don't include the protection of source.

Then i can envision a 300-600 price tag for including the ability to protect (crypt) the source, plus maybe another bonus. That's a different thing than open sourcing or not our projects.

After that, what (mainly) bigger companies may be willing to pay is support.

For "Indy" and (say) "Studio" licences, support would be minimal, mainly by community. Only "Platinum" would be $1000+ and include "real" support.

And since anybody could need support, LC could also sell support ticket at different prices depending on the licence you have.

I have other ideas, and i'm sure we can find a lot more by talking. I'm not sure what the best is, but i'm pretty sure the actual practice is not it.

[javea71]

I'm not an expert by any means but my gut instinct is that the way that livecode is marketed and essentially dumbed down on the website (including click bait blog posts) isn't doing it any favours with attracting professional, paying developers. Yes when you are inside the language and see the innovative ways it is used through user posts in the forum it's power becomes clear but that is a barrier to entry that most won't pursue. Paywalling a developer conference in 2016 is ridiculous and I hope the livecode team end the gamification aspects of their marketing techniques sooner rather than later. It's not a toy language but the website, marketing emails and gimmickly presented price lock ins sure creates that aura at times.

We're post crowdfunding and open source - it's time to grow up.

Just feels livecode is in a state of flux at the moment, sorry for going on

[FourthWorld]

We're post crowdfunding and open source - it's time to grow up.

Are you suggesting they discontinue the open source edition?

[MaxV]

I'd like to see a human readable website with:

• videos page (a part, not in the main page)
• screenshots page
• examples page, with the same apps for all operating systems and the quote "one click, on all sysytems".
• code examples page. Few example of
  • livecode Vs Java
  • livecode Vs C++/Objective C
  • livecode Vs .NET

Just this would duplicate livecode users in 3 months.

[FourthWorld]

Just this would duplicate livecode users in 3 months.

That's a very specific projection. What methodology did you use to arrive at that?

[javea71]

We're post crowdfunding and open source - it's time to grow up.

Are you suggesting they discontinue the open source edition?

Absolutely not, I meant that strictly in the sense of leaving behind the dumbed down style of communication of the crowdfunding era and moving forward on a more technical and serious productivity tool footing. Quite often with languages / technology in general, mass adoption is achieved from the top down, that is to say that professional use of a product / language influences the adoption patterns of hobbyists and the wider public, not the other way around. If professionals aren't heavily factored in as the target userbase and the marketing isn't attracting them to the language, then it's never really going to take off. There won't be that trickle down influencer effect

[Nikos]

In warming up for the Infinite LC campaign, Trevor, Kevin and Mark put together an interview that was such interesting reading, I read it twice.

The highlight of the interview was the licensing and the LC business model. I've been watching the discussion on Indy/Business licensing costs the past few months, mostly agreeing with the critics, not understanding why LC HQ is happy to let the vast majority of the community not pay anything, insisting on a $699/year ($999 soon) or nothing approach. But after this interview, I see why much of this discussion has been in vain.

There was a prelude: when announcing the Infinite LC campaign, Kevin provided an insight into the financial balance of LC when he said that they need to focus on commercial projects for a year before being able to come back to build Widgets V2. This statement made it clear that the Indy/Business licensing and "rent" pricing model is not working today (i.e. LC HQ is not receiving enough funding from it). And in the interview, Kevin more or less confirmed this directly.

But what Kevin made obvious now, which I have not seen mentioned this clearly before, is that "monetizing a small slice of the pie" is the plan all along. It is DELIBERATE that only few people have to pay. They're not trying to get more people to pay and failing - they're not trying at all.

That explains why the criticism in the forums is being skipped. Why prices are raised when most people are complaining. There's no point arguing that the licensing model doesn't work for most of us (existing and new users). They know it. They planned it this way. They don't expect our contribution. They just expect the entrenched guys and people earning money with LC to carry the load, pay the license costs, accept the raises, accept the rental model. The others can use the Community Edition and should not complain about it.

And now, Infinite LC ("The most important campaign for LiveCode of 2016") reduced to COST, and yet LC HQ still didn't have the funds from licensing to push it through themselves. Kevin said that "This business model is used in various forms with great success across the industry". That's wonderful - for the industry. But why are we happy about it since it's failing here ?

I wonder what the plan is for September, when Infinite LC is done ?

Surely no-one is expecting a mass influx of license buyers just because we'll have Widgets V2 - that is just the enabler for more and better things to come.

So the team will return to where it is today - looking for commercial projects to keep it going, or doing another fund-raising effort. Or yet another license price increase for the loyal and unfailing.

I hope that after the Infinite LC campaign, some alarm bells are ringing at LC HQ that 356 LC-loving people cannot carry the burden forever. LC-8 was supposed to bring widgets to all - 1000 were targeted for end of year. Yet just a week after that call, came the admission that the current Builder iteration isn't really up to par ("basic" was a word used several times), and that Widgets V2 are needed. Oh, and we're out of money.

I know that many more than 356 people in the LC community are overflowing with good faith in the platform. Those 356, and the others, deserve better and fairer use of that good faith.

Richard asked that people with proven experience, and CVs to back it up, send proposals to LC HQ, instead of posting on the forum. How can anyone come up with an in-depth proposal without current and past data ? Operating costs ? How many existing subscribers ? How have they changed over time ? What are the peak grossing periods ? How many people pay for extras ? I suppose LC HQ can't just post this data publicly, so asking for solid proposals that require this data to become serious is meaningless.

But as mentioned above, it's now clear that LC HQ don't want to see any of this - it's their decision to be where they are now, and they will stand by it make or break. I honestly hope they know what all of us don't, and that they make it through.

[Ormente]

Thanks Nikos, that pretty much confirm my impressions.

Richard asked that people with proven experience, and CVs to back it up, send proposals to LC HQ, instead of posting on the forum. How can anyone come up with an in-depth proposal without current and past data ? Operating costs ? How many existing subscribers ? How have they changed over time ? What are the peak grossing periods ? How many people pay for extras ?

That was just a "polite" way to tell us we don't know what we are talking about and they don't want to hear anything from us

It seems they are half way to change to a "Livecode fundation" a la Blender. That could be a real option methink.

[Newbie4]

The "Blender" route seems the logical end point for LiveCode.

While the current directions do not seem to be working, they are missing another opportunity.

It is hard to compete in the programming languages arena. Especially against companies like Apple (Swift), Google (Dart, Go) and many other new languages that are getting attention (Scala, Opa, Erlang, Ceylon) and still compete against the popular languages everyone “should know” (Java, Python, C++, PHP, Ruby, Javascript,..)

Programmers are reluctant to change for many reasons ( Why Do Some Programming Languages Live and Others Die? http://www.wired.com/2012/06/berkeley-p ... languages/ ) We see that the top languages do not change much year after year http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index?page=index. Why or why not change is another discussion entirely. The fact is that It is not a good market strategy.

The best market to go after right now is the educational market. Take the educational world by storm like Hypercard did originally. Start them young, get them hooked, then you will also have many paying customers as their programs mature and they want to sell/promote them. You will also have the attention of the computer world and then maybe get some traction of the experienced programmers.

Programming and computer science is the hot topic in education now. Many countries/school districts are writing curriculums to promote computer skills in all grades. Every school wants to offer computer programming. The race to computer literacy is becoming like the race to the moon. Much attention, money and resources are being diverted to it in many countries and by many school systems.

This is a rare opportunity for LiveCode to distinguish itself as the one language to use in the transition through all the grades. The choice of languages is so fragmented across all grades that no one can agree on a base or primary language. Start with Scratch, Logo or Turtle Graphics, then to Minecraft/Java, or Python. Then to Java, C/C++ or maybe something else.

LiveCode could also promote its advantages in other areas - less training needed for teachers ( the shortage of computer instructors is another crisis they are dealing with), time freed up for logic, critical thinking and problem solving skills to be taught, its verbosity promotes reading skills, English learning, and many other reasons.

Time is running out. If LiveCode wants to go this route, they need to be started, They need to get feedback from the teachers/students who have been learning LiveCode, devise a comprehensive strategy, collect and organize resources (people, programs, lessons, etc), improve the website, documentation and learning resources and start a full scale marketing promotion. It does not have to be a money making endeavor, at first. (That may kill it right from the start) But it can evolve into one as they get a critical mass of users and materials.

[Ormente]

I agree with most of your point, Newbie4

As vocal as i am about my concerns, i must add a few positive points here.

1 / LiveCode is a lot more than simply a language. As a language it's not my favorite one. I have a background with a lot of others: LC is a bit verbose and lacks some useful things (AFAIK, as i'm relatively new here). But it is a decent one, and because i like Smalltalk or Haskell we don't have to be pedantic: practicality trumps purity. Yes i would like enhancements, but the language is more or less OK. The point is : LC is a world you live in, not just a language, it's not unlike Smalltalk/Pharo. And that's a beautiful world to live in.

2 / In the business world, LC competes more with so-called frameworks or (pretending to be) cross platform development tools than languages. The language aspect is only the tip of the iceberg. But it's definitely possible that the non-mainstream language used here is a bit of a showstopper for some.

3 / The educational market is a good target, as LC is very well suited even as a language : it's pseudo code that actualy runs
; But it is also a rich toolset, so students can actualy do nice real things with their "pseudocode". But, here again, i have to add that (for me) LC is a lot more than just a "beginner language".

4 / We have to keep in mind that a company (or a fundation) needs money to afford good developpers, documentation writers, and so on... whatever the structure is, it needs money. On a personal level i'm like Richard: i would be glad to pay less just for the sake of it... but that's not the point: my concern was that the high price strategy may be harming the livecode future. A future i want to believe in. As we don't know the ins an outs of the situation, we can only provide opinion... and hope they can find a way to the captain's crew ears and (maybe) help the decision makers assure us all a bright future.

[FourthWorld]

Richard asked that people with proven experience, and CVs to back it up, send proposals to LC HQ, instead of posting on the forum. How can anyone come up with an in-depth proposal without current and past data ? Operating costs ? How many existing subscribers ? How have they changed over time ? What are the peak grossing periods ? How many people pay for extras ? I suppose LC HQ can't just post this data publicly, so asking for solid proposals that require this data to become serious is meaningless.

Personally I don't think the proposals here have been meaningless; I'm trying to be more optimistic and see if some of these might become actionable.

Of course no company is going to post their balance sheet in a forum. If you have a proposal in mind that requires detailed operational expense breakdowns, asking for it from other users who do not have access to them cannot satisfy your request.

But since most of the suggestions here are of a sort that don't actually require that, perhaps good ideas could simply be submitted to the company without looking for hurdles to doing so. After all, Bill Marriott didn't let that stop him, and we do see good ideas acted on from many in the community.

"Things must be different!" simply isn't actionable. If somewhere among these abstractions there are specific actionable suggestions, please send those to the company, the only people who can act on them. Posting them into a user-to-user support forum cannot make them actionable. Moreover, the relatively small number of people among the thousands using LiveCode who post the same suggestions here over and over rather than sending them to the core team creates a certain kind of noise that, despite the clearly good intentions, is in effect a form of anti-marketing, not a confidence-building choice when conveying marketing savvy.

Your post was a reasonable summary of Kevin's presentation about the high cost of delivering a tool with LiveCode's uncommon scope, and indeed deriving income from professionals is very much the plan. Kevin's description and your summary of it provide a good outline of how software projects get funded: those deriving revenue from the work contribute back so the work keeps going.

For example, Python doesn't fall from the sky; Google and others pay full-time salaries for contributors to the Python code base. A friend at Heroku tells me they have two people on staff whose primary job is to contribute to postgreSQL. Xamarin had millions in funding before its acquisition by Microsoft, and now more resources than ever before. Swift is backed by one of the wealthiest multinationals on earth.

Looking for revenue from those deriving their own revenue from a software is not a new idea, and for LiveCode that hasn't changed with the premier of its open source edition.

What has changed is that the relatively minor license fees from hobbyists are now optional donations, and perhaps interestingly now that they're optional they rarely happen at all. Please remember that nearly every suggested price point in this and related threads had been tried before. If a low-priced limited option was the savior solution hoped for we wouldn't be having this discussion. Those who don't derive revenue from a software just have less software revenue to share, and I don't think that arithmetic is a failing of LiveCode or its audience, just a reflection of the nature of dev tool economies.

Fortunately there are many ways to contribute to a project like LiveCode beyond licensing fees and donations. We've had significant contributions from the community with many aspects of the product, mostly in documentation but also in IDE and even engine enhancements.

Widgets aren't expected to be a magic pony, but they are a great way to make many things that used to be implemented in C++ open for scripters. For example, just last week someone in these forums needed a new property added to the chart widget, and Bernd added that and submitted a pull request so it'll be available for everyone in a new build soon. That sort of thing happens all the time, and in an audience of scripters where relatively few are proficient in C++, it's a very good step forward.

Re. the web site, many changes have happened and many more are in the works:

As a community member I submitted the suggestion that they split the site into two separate domains, noting in my proposal that many dual-licensed projects have had good success using their .com domains to attract those who would be more interested in proprietary licensing while leaving the .org domain to address the very different audience keenly interested in open source. We've put together a community web team, and our EDU Outreach team will have a section in the .org site specifically focused on EDU use, as one example of where we're going with that.

With the .com site, you may have noticed that, as suggested in this thread, the older taglines like "Anyone can program" have been removed from the front page weeks ago, and are being removed elsewhere as the site revisions continue. The core team agrees that now that the proprietary and open source audiences each have their own sites, their focus for the .com site should very much as suggested here, on the professional software developer. Right now they have a v8-release-focused page because it is indeed perhaps the most significant set of changes in any version yet, but very soon you'll see the front page convey a more general message targeting the key audience for that site.

Code comparisons with different languages of the sort proposed here had previously been on the site, and may even be there still. But they weren't among the more visited pages there, so while it seemed as good an idea to them as it does for some here, in practice the metrics didn't bear that out. Personally, I do believe there may be a way to summarize a comparison which could be more compelling, and if anyone here has specific ideas on that please send them in via email for consideration.

But one thing you will see on the site today is that nearly every page now has a brief testimonial from a happy customer. This was also a community suggestion, though it was sent to the company rather than posted here so they core team could receive it. This is a very useful addition for a language less well known than some of the other great languages because it allows site visitors to see real people achieving real-world success with LiveCode.

And to further that, the Case Studies page has been refined three times this year alone, with further expansion in the works. Showing newcomers that LiveCode has been used on successful projects is important, and that importance is well recognized.

Just like people, every company always has room for improvement. Here I've outlined some of the improvements that have happened recently, and some in the works, but the opportunities for continual improvement are boundless.

My hope is that we can accomplish two things going forward:

1. Encourage specific actionable suggestions for improvement.
2. Submit those to the company via support AT livecode.com so they may be acted on.

And if anyone here has an earnest interest in joining the Community Web Team, please send me a PM and we'll identify ways you can contribute.

For those who prefer a less structured workflow to demonstrating their good ideas, let me reiterate my offer I've made in these forums before: I own the domain learnliveocode.com and have good hosting with LC Server installed - I'd be happy to donate it to a community team who has time and interest to flesh it out into their ideal LiveCode site.

[FourthWorld]

That was just a "polite" way to tell us we don't know what we are talking about and they don't want to hear anything from us

Ever spend time in the MacRumors forums? Lots of ideas about how Apple should be doing things. But none of them sent to Apple. Meanwhile, I have a friend who is a marketing VP at Apple. He had ideas on how they could improve, and worked with the team directly to make those happen.

LiveCode Ltd is like Apple, and Adobe, and most other companies I've seen in that regard: there's a very regular high volume of suggestions floating around in their community. Some of those contradict others, some have already been tried, and some may be real gems, but when they're submitted to a user-to-user support forum rather than to the company that choice almost guarantees the company won't see them, certainly leaving things far more to chance than if they were sent directly.

My suggestion that submitting a business case for a proposal be accompanied by at least some description of the submitter's background is not an attempt to shut those ideas down. On the contrary, it's how businesses can more readily act on good ideas. Ask any angel or VC investor: the ideas within a company are important, but what they're really investing in is the team. Experience does matter in many aspects of business, and when submitting any proposal to any company you'll find greater success if at least some supporting experience is included.

I've seen many ideas submitted from community members acted on to produce good results. In every case, the suggestion was accompanied by background materials describing the business case for the plan. It's how change happens in any organization. There's just too much noise in any business environment to be changing direction every time a new memo comes in.

In my volunteer role of Community Manager, I can provide background on things the company is doing and guidance on how to contribute. I've been trying to do that, but like I've said, there's always room for improvement. Any specific, actionable ideas here that can positively affect the open source project is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to help steward. But please, they should be specific and actionable, and ideally with at least some supporting material of any kind to help the quality of the suggestion be more readily recognized.

There are specific projects discussed here in these forums for community engagement, including sections for Education Outreach, Engine Contributors. and IDE Contributors. Community-driven projects are well suited for these forums.

For things we may want to the company to do without community engagement, please submit those to the company.

It seems they are half way to change to a "Livecode fundation" a la Blender. That could be a real option methink.

The .com/.org split is a step in that direction, but unlike most FOSS foundations it seems unlikely LiveCode Ltd. will revest as a non-profit anytime soon. Still, in terms of the mechanics of support, contribution, and outcomes the .org site should indeed be able to fulfill many of the goals of such a model.

[FourthWorld]

LC is a bit verbose and lacks some useful things (AFAIK, as i'm relatively new here).

Welcome aboard.

The verbosity is seemingly apparent yet in the larger sense hopefully illusory: as you spend more time with the language you should find that while in many cases an individual line of code is indeed lengthier than in some other languages, overall you should yourself writing far fewer lines to accomplish a goal, so many fewer that ultimately it's a very strong net savings on typing.

If you find otherwise we have work to do, which leads me to: what language features would you like to see added? The lead devs are very interested in maintaining LiveCode's unique flavor, which they feel is ultimately part of its value, even if it means unlearning for those accustomed to other languages. But at the same time they're quite open to exploring new ideas for functionality which could extend the value of the language. Your thoughts on new language features would be most welcome.

[Ormente]

I get your point Richard, and i'm very sorry i misread your message. Please accept my apologies.

Thanks a lot for repeating what i should have understood in the first place.