Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Find out what's going on with LiveCode (the company), product releases, announcements, and events.

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nomodes
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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by nomodes » Mon Feb 25, 2013 10:55 pm

Some of us want to develop applications and distribute them for free to the public. It's only slightly inconvenient to distribute a Mac application outside the Mac App Store but it's not really practical to distribute an iOS app to the public outside the App Store. So we will continue to need a LiveCode Commercial License even if there is nothing commercial about our iOS app. Depending on how RunRev's pricing policy evolves, this may or may not be practical.

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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by monte » Tue Feb 26, 2013 8:22 am

I don't see how going open source changes that situation. You need a commercial license now and runrev could change their license however they choose. Of course apple could at some point resolve their issues with the GPL and it would then be fine to do what you want. So it's up to apple not runrev to allow GPL apps.
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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by nomodes » Tue Feb 26, 2013 5:54 pm

Monte,

I know that Apple's policies are out of RunRev's control. I am a fan of RunRev and its new open source initiative. It's just that the combo was causing me concern.

Open source changes the situation because RunRev is changing its license structure to adapt. The license fee schedule will become simpler, which is good. It is also good that the equivalent of today's "personal license" will drop in price from low to zero for people willing to open the source of their application. And existing perpetual and pay-as-you-go licenses will be honored.

But it appears that all new commercial licenses will be annual. If you are selling a product and you need to rebuild and redeploy it, you will have to have an active annual license subscription, even if the reason for your rebuild is a bug fix in the version of LiveCode you have licensed or a change in the target OS. Opening your source code and setting the product price to zero won't be enough to escape this requirement if it's an iOS app that is offered to the general public. If the annual LiveCode license fee plus Apple's $99 annual developer program membership fee makes your iOS economics infeasible, what choices will you have? You could ask customers for donations or try to charge a token price. Or you could abandon your app and watch its store ratings plummet for lack of maintenance or be removed from the store entirely.

But there is a way out. If you make the choice of opening your source code even though your product is free, someone else with an active commercial license could build and release a clone with very little work or technical risk. There's a modest business opportunity here. A developer with a commercial license could create open source clones of abandoned open source apps, keep them up to date and market them, charging a token price or generating advertising or in-app-purchase revenue. That's the magic of GPLv3.

Larry

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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by paulsr » Wed Feb 27, 2013 11:22 am

Forgive me for not leaping up and down with glee at the news that this Kickstarter thing has been successful. I've been ignoring it, hoping it will go away. I don't really have the time nor interest to figure it all out, but I guess now, I have no choice.

I've been happily coding in Livecode for several months, and didn't really want to see anything change. I assumed my commercial license would give me access to Livecode updates, which would be produced at regular intervals. I came to Livecode having been burned by another product which suddenly disappeared from the marketplace. I figured the higher, much higher, cost of LC would provide me with some product security.

From the minimal reading I've done, it seems like LC is about to become a whole new product. An open source product. Well, whoopee. As a commercial developer, why do I need an open source product?

Apparently, if I want to produce commercial products with the open source LC, I will have to pay some new fees. I haven't yet figured out how much, and am scared to ask.

If I read the FAQ I find the question...

"What happens to my existing Livecode perpetual license?"

And the answer is...

"We will continue to honour existing license terms until its expiry date."

I think someone needs to grab a dictionary and look up the word perpetual. When I paid my license fee I assumed my license matched the dictionary definition.

Probably someone is going to tell me I can carry on using LC 5.5 for as long as I want, with the implication that I will be cut off from any new LC developments.

Everyone else seems to be excited by the new open source/kickstarter news, so what am I missing here?

--paul

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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by marksmithhfx » Wed Feb 27, 2013 3:50 pm

paulsr wrote:Everyone else seems to be excited by the new open source/kickstarter news, so what am I missing here?

--paul
Hi Paul,

As I see it, 3 major things: more developers, product security (can't be burned if the company folds like your last bad experience), and many, many more users hence interest in the product and opportunities for gurus and developers (a broader market)

1. Anyone will now be able to write code for the product and the core engine. That means if RunRev does not have the resources to address a concern (just go to the Kickstart page and look at the current stretch goals for some examples) and someone else needs the functionality they can add it to the open source platform. Don't think this works? Just look at SQLite.. it has a core team of developers but tons of code has been added by Google and Apple and other consortium members because they needed functionality now, had the resources to do it, and could not wait. That will happen for LC too. Not today, but once it gets more broadly used and there are greater dependencies on the platform that will start to happen. Also, there are people like Monte Goulding and others who are ready to jump in now.

2. Product security: If RunRev folds LC lives on. You are now protected from being burned by a company going under.

3. More users: its free. Anyone can pick it up and start coding with it. With a free version books like LC for dummies becomes a distinct possibility (because of the potential new market) which in turn increases the number of users, etc. There are thousands upon thousands of professional people that would love to try their hand at writing some code but are not willing to invest in an obscure development platform. Making it free probably will unshackle LC from the obscure category creating tens of thousands more users who will all need help and assistance, and potentially want your professional coding skills to help them finish something they have started. And the burgeoning app market combined with the cross platform capability of LC will make it very attractive for a lot of people. Write once, run anywhere is a huge market advantage for LC over some of its competitors.

those are just my thoughts.... no doubt there are many other good reasons to rejoice. Happy coding.

-- mark
macOS 12.6.5 (Monterey), Xcode 14.2, LC 10.0.0, iOS 15.6.1
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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by Paul D » Wed Feb 27, 2013 6:00 pm

All of those points are just speculation and hopes that a magical increase in users will help the development take off. SQLite being open source is a bad comparison since they are open source for 2 different reasons and are 2 different things. SQLite was essentially written by 1 guy, actually fills a need and because it is a fantastic solution to a problem it has a HUGE user base and can not keep up with specific changes. Livecode goes open source in HOPES to grow and compete against other development solutions. The problem is, nobody needs Livecode to do what can already be done with say... Objective-C, C# and Java. People come to livecode and say "I need to do this, can I do this yet?" and it may or may not be possible. The reality is, if Livecode was a legitimate, long term solution, I believe it would have taken off. It hasn't received the user base the team needed, so they're going open source.

Livecode is a very nice but niche product and if the user is willing to have some patients, growing pains/bumps and bruises along the way; it is great for some applications and while Livecode has gotten better I don't know how you are going to get into the development world and compete against .NET, Java, HTML5, etc... until that happens, Livecode will just be what it is and always has been. And I don't know if going open source will change that and who knows, it may make it worse. But we shall see! Just my 2 cents.

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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by doc » Wed Feb 27, 2013 6:24 pm

The problem is, nobody needs Livecode to do what can already be done with say... Objective-C, C# and Java.
Excuse me, but what have you been smoking?
Really.

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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by jacque » Wed Feb 27, 2013 7:09 pm

paulsr wrote: I think someone needs to grab a dictionary and look up the word perpetual. When I paid my license fee I assumed my license matched the dictionary definition.

Probably someone is going to tell me I can carry on using LC 5.5 for as long as I want, with the implication that I will be cut off from any new LC developments.

Everyone else seems to be excited by the new open source/kickstarter news, so what am I missing here?

--paul
Your existing license will be honored. If it is perpetual, it will remain that way. It won't expire and you'll get updates. Basically, the commercial license will allow you to continue exactly as you are now, writing closed-source apps and distributing them however you like. For those who don't have a perpetual license, they will be able to use the commercial version until expiry, and then can decide whether to renew their license or go with the free version.

The open source version is an addition, not a substitution. If you want to follow the old model, that's what the commercial license is for, and it remains the same.
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com

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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by monte » Wed Feb 27, 2013 9:49 pm

Paul

Yes, perpetual means (as is stated in the RunRev store) that you can keep using that version including any minor releases included with it forever.

RunRev are not taking any of your rights away with the open source move. Actually they are giving us all the right to use and share LiveCode at no cost under some specific license terms. If you aren't happy with those license terms then you have a commercial license you can use. If you need new features under those terms then just like before you will need to pay to get the latest major releases. The cost of that is actually going down.

Cheers

Monte
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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by marksmithhfx » Wed Feb 27, 2013 10:02 pm

Paul D wrote:All of those points are just speculation and hopes that a magical increase in users will help the development take off.
You are right, I choose to believe.

Cheers,

-- mark
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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by macnomad2 » Wed Feb 27, 2013 10:06 pm

I believe also, and there is proof.
As more users/developers will come to this forum, trolls will appear ;)

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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by Paul D » Thu Feb 28, 2013 6:10 pm

doc wrote:
The problem is, nobody needs Livecode to do what can already be done with say... Objective-C, C# and Java.
Excuse me, but what have you been smoking?
Really.
Excellent counter point. Thanks for contributing to the discussion.

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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by Paul D » Thu Feb 28, 2013 6:13 pm

macnomad2 wrote:I believe also, and there is proof.
As more users/developers will come to this forum, trolls will appear ;)
Ah yeah, you're right. Everything is sunshine and rainbows. Never mind being skeptical, asking questions or having concerns... if you don't believe I guess you're a troll, eh? Sound logic.

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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by FourthWorld » Thu Feb 28, 2013 6:32 pm

Paul D wrote:All of those points are just speculation and hopes that a magical increase in users will help the development take off.
I believe LiveCode will be recognized in due time as a uniquely valuable option in the FOSS world.

There are hundreds of FOSS dev tools and languages, but LiveCode is among the easiest to learn and AFAIK unique in the way its language is inherently integrated with the GUI elements it manipulates. Other options like Python also provide good GUI support, but it's available through add-on libraries, requiring a more cumbersome workflow. With LC, the language and the object model are the same thing, so one can think about their software in terms of the user experience, and code accordingly, with a lot less work.

True, LiveCode presents a very uncommon way of working, so while many will also discover the equally uncommon productivity it offers, it may not suit every taste. And thankfully, it takes nothing away from the other hundred languages we can choose for a given project.

But I suspect many of those who take a little time to get to know LC will likely come to enjoy it. And as they spread the word about this new free tool they've discovered, the numbers will grow....
Richard Gaskin
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Re: Help Us Take LiveCode Open Source

Post by FourthWorld » Thu Feb 28, 2013 6:36 pm

macnomad2 wrote:I believe also, and there is proof.
As more users/developers will come to this forum, trolls will appear ;)
There will be trolls, but let's please not turn this forum into one of those unwelcome places where everyone who asks challenging questions sets off a witch hunt.

In the Ubuntu forums they have a Code of Conduct participants are asked to agree to, which above all else simply asks that members treat each other with respect.

I see no need for a two-page CoC here, but let's please offer the benefit of the doubt, if only to avoid leaving behind a trail of angry replies that may turn off the many newcomers who will be dropping in here in droves in the coming months.

If you find a post you feel is inappropriate, please consider using the "?" button ("Report this Post"), and Klaus or I or one of the other moderators will look into it.

Thanks for considering this. Let's keep this place friendly, productive, and welcoming.
Richard Gaskin
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