New version 5.5 announced - free or fee?

[karmacomposer]

I think only LC Complete comes with 12 months of free upgrades.
So it doesn't sound like you have LC Complete.

I'm pretty sure anything else only gets you 3 months worth of free upgrades withnin a version.
And maybe not even that.

Contact support. They've always been responsive when asking about upgrade eligibility.
But mostly disappointingly when it comes to me being surprised with the LC upgrade policy.
i.e. with me missing out cause I'm so busy developing I forget the fine print.

Nope - you get 3 whole months of updates before you have to pay out the ass again and again:

When you purchase a new LiveCode license, you get three months worth of free
upgrades, during which you receive any new release automatically. You also will
get any .0x release for your major version number eg if you bought version 5, you
will also get 5.0.1, 5.0.2 etc. If we release an upgrade to 5.1, outside the three
month grace period, you would need to pay a "minor" upgrade fee to get that
release. If we release 6.0, you would need to pay a "major" upgrade fee. Typically
"minor" upgrades cost around 1/3rd of the initial license price, and "major"
upgrades cost around 1/2.

If you want to get all updates, all year, you would need to upgrade to the
Complete license, which is the only license type we offer which does carry a
year's worth of updates.

So, they want you to pay the yearly amount for complete to get what almost ALL
other companies include (I have tons of software and none of them require updating
and re-paying this much. The only one that REALLY was doing this was Vue and I
decided to pay $12 per month and now I get all updates and major versions for free
as long as I pay the monthly amount).

I also will point out that few of the deployment modules ACTUALLY WORK!!! Web
doesn't. Android is a WIP. IOS I cannot use because I am a PC guy. Never could
get server to install properly, but I really gave it little or no thought. Never tried
Linux, but I assume that works. Mac and PC work - kind of. I lost a client because
his Mac notebook could not run a app I made for him in Live Code that I deployed to
Mac (worked perfectly on the PC). He could also not use the web deployment at all -
at best, both were finicky.

I refuse to be a paying beta tester for RunRev. Shame on them.

I really am done now. Have fun everyone. Obviously, I am too poor to own Live Code.

Mike

[BarrySumpter]

Yeah. Right there with you Mike.

I don't see why they can't offer a better deal for multiple products for everyone.

Maybe to chase off sole propriators and the personal developers.
And have fewer clients to support.

The WWW is huge.

Why not trial a better deal for sole propriators and personal developers who want fewer products?

Seems like they've got support sorted out and summer academy etc sorted out and the forum to assist new clients and a pelithera of other places new cients can research.

I feel like there are a lot of developers missing out because of the priceing structure.

Oh well, gotta press on n manage this some how.

All my best to everyone.

[jacque]

I lost a client because his Mac notebook could not run a app I made for him in Live Code that I deployed to Mac (worked perfectly on the PC).

I wish you'd asked about that. Your Mac standalone was fine, but when you transfer an app from a PC to a Mac, the executable bit is lost due to the differences in file structures. We could have told you how to fix that. It isn't a LiveCode issue, it's a PC/Mac transfer issue.

[BarrySumpter]

...

One thing to be aware of in 5.5 though, the file format has changed, so if you want to use 5.5 and also 5.0 at the same time, make sure you save your stacks in legacy format. Otherwise 5.5-saved stacks won't open in 5.0. If that happens to you, you can fix it by re-opening the stack in 5.5 and doing a "save as" in legacy 2.7 format. Another way to avoid the whole issue is to select the checkbox in Preferences that specifies the IDE should save all stacks in whatever format they were originally.

Nice! Thanks for that!

[heatherlaine]

Having read this thread, there seem to be quite a number of misconceptions in it. Also, I'd like to start by saying, if you have a specific problem, with licensing, downloading, pricing, offers, or indeed anything like this that you don't understand, it is a great deal more effective to write to support, support@runrev.com, rather than this forum, which is not monitored directly by RunRev staff.

First, the originator of the thread had a problem with a specific offer we put out, in regard to obtaining the Developer Program free for three months. This issue was rapidly resolved once the problem was drawn to the attention of support staff.

Second, the question was asked, why are there not unlimited free trials available. There is a very good reason for this: a great many people who use LiveCode use it in an office/business setting, to create one off utilities, automate processes, etc. They do not build standalone applications. Therefore the limitation imposed by the trial of not allowing permanent standalones to be built, or flagging them with a trial splashscreen, is no deterrent to abuse for this type of user. It is a sad fact that relying on the honesty of users to pay for the software they are using in a timely fashion, if there is no requirement to do so, will lead to most businesses going bust over time, or in the best case mean that there is no money available to grow the business, if the business is able to survive. To put it in the best light, users simply "forget" to pay, if they are able to go on using the software without doing so.

Third, if you don't want a particular release, there is no obligation to buy it. We do not force you to upgrade if the features in the release are not what you need. You can continue using the previous version, and continue to download all previous versions and license them from within your account. Please check the little drop down menu next to the download buttons - you will see that you can roll back to any previous version you owned.

Regards,

Heather

Customer Services Manager
RunRev Ltd

[paul_gr]

I guess a lot of unpleasantness would have been avoided if Runrev had a consistent upgrade policy that was the same for all types of upgrade.
Personally I don't like asking support for anything as basic as upgrading... it might be better if it is explained fully and clearly on the Runrev site.

cheers
Paul

[Mark]

I agree with Paul.

[BarrySumpter]

+1 with perhaps a count down?

http://forums.runrev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 889#p53876

[gayasoft]

Lets see how long it takes RR to realize that its time to reintroduce the subscription model again as long as they refuse to setup a legally binding product lifecycle policy to define 'lifetime of a product' (if you want to come up with upgrade fees, fine, but then get a predefined schedule with upgrades every 12 - 18 months like Adobe, Autodesk, Maxon, ... and major feature additions whenever you would like to get payed. Don't come up with upgrades every 4-8 months with nothing to gimmicks being added. Example: requesting a payment within this little time while adding basically nothing for Win and Mac yet asking for more than $10 / platform for adding text formating, thats just insane), its the only way this will work out in favor of both sides - RR and customers.

Its what I will wait for or an LC version that adds more than gimmicks like text formating when it expects me to pay for it.

[FourthWorld]

Don't come up with upgrades every 4-8 months with nothing to gimmicks being added.

One man's "gimmicks" are another man's valuable features. I have two clients who find the enhancements in the 5.5 field object critical for their own product enhancements, and I have a few products of my own in the pipeline in which they'll be quite valuable.

Just curious: do you use LiveCode at all? You seem to like Unity, and indeed it's a fine toolkit. I just couldn't find anything among your 17 posts here that wasn't complaining about RunRev policies; for all the opinions offered about how they should run their company, I didnt see anything asked or contributed about actually using their product. No big either way, just curious since you've been around here for quite a while.

[jacque]

Amen, Richard. The new field was more than a year in the making and took hundreds of man hours to achieve. It was one of the most-requested features in every survey. It's opened up so many opportunities for developers, I don't think calling the changes just "text formatting" does it justice.

We can now embed tables into a field that present most of the features provided by dedicated word processors, without using difficult work-arounds or separate group objects. The tables will scroll with the field text and can be manipulated dynamically with a few lines of script. Along with this comes the ability to create native tree views -- something no one has really been able to achieve before now. There have been some attempts, even commercial ones, that did as fine a job as was possible, but due to the lack of engine support the required syntax was complex. Now we can make tree views inside fields natively with a minimal amount of code, the features we need are built-in. There's new embeddable HTML text capabilities which I haven't begun to explore yet, but appear to open up display features that used to require a browser object -- which of course couldn't be embedded into a field. And another big one: unicode that just works, with text chunking available in any language. Anyone who's tried to use unicode in the past can't help but notice this big improvement over the clunky and awkward requirements unicode used to have. Unicode that "just works" has been a top request for a very long time.

But for me the improvement I like best was the de-coupling of the font properties from the styling ones. The engine had this for a while back in ancient times, but it had to be removed for compatibility reasons. Now it's back. Once again I can set a field's font without losing all the styling. For those who don't know what this implies, it means you can set the font of a whole stack once when the stack opens and all fields will inherit that font without losing their style runs. Before this, if I wanted to show styled field text in the native system font, I had to store the HTML text in a property in every single field, and then parse the property and replace the field content on every single opencard. No more. One line of code and it's all native text. I'm really happy about that. I can rip out tons of now-useless scripts and properties and I'll never have to use them again.

[Mark]

Hi,

Unicode still doesn't "just work".

Best,

Mark

[FourthWorld]

Unicode still doesn't "just work".

Looking over RunRev's press release for v5.5 I didn't find where they claimed it does. In fact, the word "Unicode" doesn't appear in that press release at all:
http://www.runrev.com/company/press-roo ... velopment-

While your frequent laments on this issue here and on the use-rev list have been noted by the users who read them, I don't think the end-users in either venue can do much to help you on that, since of course they have no access to LiveCode's source code.

Have you considered using the RQCC?

I don't believe I've seen any Unicode-related issue there that had your votes. In fact, many issues noted there are apparently so trivial in the eyes of their own submitters that the submitter himself has not voted for them, such as this one you submitted which Mark Waddingham was unable to reproduce:
http://quality.runrev.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5481

[BarrySumpter]

Lets stop the bullying.
We all have as much right to post about wanting a better upgrade price as anyone else here.
If someone can't get any response in one area they have the right to try another.
Just because some poll hasn't recorded enough supporting votes doesn't mean its not a fantastic idea and not a benefit to all.
Any more than the number of posts reflect noobie, intermedia, expert, burnout, or elitist.
Some of us are too busy to participate.
Some contribute hoping to improve by example.
Some lie in waiting to snipe.
Some help specific others but not all.
Others will agree because it suits them to support a particular someone else.
Please don't think you can get something done by paying extra to vote.
And it will then magicly pass thru all decision making and happen.
Reads like too much political red tape to me.

Too early to start the day on such a negative note.
Was really looking forware to more LiveCode new features study.
Gonna fix a mocha n forget all this.

[Mark]

Richard,

I replied to Jacque, not to a press release. I reported a few bugs about unicode.

Kind regards,

Mark