Possibly the worst effect of removing the Open Source version.

[richmond62]

2021

There has been a definite change in the forums which is sad…

Now that is really taking hold.

I do hope whoever took that decision has no doubts about it.

[bogs]

I have a feeling that almost ALL of the users of the Open Source version of LiveCode have stopped
contributing to the LiveCode Forums; leaving it poorer.

Well, I don't know about *all* of them. I infrequently get notices about someone having a MC related question, however that is usually answered before I get too it <schedule has changed>.

I suppose if the MC thread section gets deleted, I probably would have no call to come here anymore.

It’s not just that contributions have stopped. It’s also that fewer people asking questions (presumably FOSS users), which in turn means that fewer solutions are given or devised, so there is less interesting discussion.

I can't speak for all FOSS users naturally, nor would I assume that questions should dry up because LC changed their pricing structure. Questions come from users of all lengths of time and experience, I would have to believe that new users are still testing out the software as well? I see plenty of questions pop up when I do come by.

Whatever the "beef" about the end of the Open Source version, the FACT that we all enjoyed some 8-9 years of unfettered
access to LiveCode is a marvellous thing and why, suddenly, those users should dry up strikes me as very odd indeed as, presumably,
their on-going LiveCode projects have not suddenly stopped dead in their tracks<sic>

I have no beef with LC's decision, it is their product.

I, however, am solely devoted to OSS. Even when I was here more regularly, I wasn't using LC for any projects, I was more curious about it historically and intellectually. The contributions I made to the forum when I could were along the lines of what Axwald was talking about, my feelings have always been when you receive, you give back.

I have to admit I was a little thrown by some of the vitriol I found later towards the OSS side of things by some longer term users, but looking back I suppose I shouldn't have been. This was never a fully OSS product, and when your base is split, well, some will perceive value and some will not.

When I resurrected MC, I stopped using the later IDEs and their engines almost entirely except for trouble shooting or finding bugs. It is unfortunate that my combination of hardware and choice of OS tended to blunt a lot of what I would consider valuable things found in those sessions, and when the IDE changed around ver. 8.x, I found using it even briefly to be untenable.

Ultimately I wound up mostly using the MC 2.5 trial edition which is more than sufficient for the tiny amount of time I spend coding anything in transcript, and occasionally opening some of the 6 / 7x series for the 15 mins of LC stuff I have left to put up.

And even in the MC IDE, I pretty much limit the interaction to the message box. I haven't opened the Menu bar in a few months now.

I certainly wish LC the best going forward, I certainly hope their new strategy gets them to where they want to be.

[golife]

@bogs 25 Dec. 2024

Putting myself into the shoes of anybody reading this post, I would probably be lost with terms such as MC, FOSS, etc. What do these acronyms mean? And what was the contribution meant to say?

[b]New direction of LiveCode[/b]

If the new direction of LiveCode has no appeal then it will not survive, otherwise it will flourish and we would see it.

My suggestion could have been the opposite: Get rid of all the paid versions, make LiveCode completely free, but switch to a donation system and other means of income, sponsoring, end user products that solve real problems and sell, or focus on development teams as a service, etc. There are examples proving that such concepts can work. Appeal to the hundreds of thousands. When I look at LiveCode YouTube videos, they seem to attract about 3 to 7 likes. Or did I miss something?

There are not just a few users having spent literally thousands of hours of their life time with this language. And they have nothing to say because it is not "their product"?

There is so much to say and argue, contribute with suggestions and help and discuss, but why would anybody do this? Without enthusiasm and engaged users such a product will never fly.

Wishing the LiveCofe team and all of you happiness and success.

Roland

[stam]

@bogs 25 Dec. 2024

Putting myself into the shoes of anybody reading this post, I would probably be lost with terms such as MC, FOSS, etc. What do these acronyms mean? And what was the contribution meant to say?

New direction of LiveCode

If the new direction of LiveCode has no appeal then it will not survive, otherwise it will flourish and we would see it.

My suggestion could have been the opposite: Get rid of all the paid versions, make LiveCode completely free, but switch to a donation system and other means of income, sponsoring, end user products that solve real problems and sell, or focus on development teams as a service, etc. There are examples proving that such concepts can work. Appeal to the hundreds of thousands. When I look at LiveCode YouTube videos, they seem to attract about 3 to 7 likes. Or did I miss something?

There are not just a few users having spent literally thousands of hours of their life time with this language. And they have nothing to say because it is not "their product"?

There is so much to say and argue, contribute with suggestions and help and discuss, but why would anybody do this? Without enthusiasm and engaged users such a product will never fly.

Wishing the LiveCofe team and all of you happiness and success.

Roland

Hi Roland and Merry Christmas!

You may wish to use Google to fill the gaps, but in brief:
MC = MetaCard, which LC (neé Runtime Revolution/RunRev) purchased and made the engine, the clever stuff, their own. MC was a worthy crossplatform successor to HyperCard.
Again, if any of these term are unfamiliar, then Google is your friend.

FOSS = Free and Open Source. Basically free software and free access to the source code which you can modify if you want and depending on the type of licence, you can do many things or anything with.

For the sake of people new to LC (you probably are aware of the below):
For many years LiveCode offered a dual licence scheme: a multi-tier commercial version and a FOSS version. Basically your idea of what should be done has already been done, for many years, and failed to either draw in the masses or generate enough revenue to make the company viable. Apart from commercial (ie more expensive) version, they also had a community "plus" version, which was very low cost and essentially amounted to donationware.
But none of this was apparently viable for the company and they reverted to commercial licences, but a tier much higher than previously.

You can probably still find a large number of posts about this most recent change on the forums where there was a lot of bitterness because this change was sprung on the user base with no notice, and I am very critical of the way this was done (and I know that some of the threads have been deleted). Literally one day everyone woke up and the website had changed, all references to FOSS had been removed and so on. It was not professional at all and denoted very little actual regard for the user base such as it was, but at least it was loyal up to that point.

The reality is that the level of developer targeted by LC was always the single dev/amateur/“citizen developer” and while they used to have a “pro” licence, I don’t think this was heavily subscribed to (although only LC knows).

If LC was actually serious about spreading to the professional developers en masse, they would have built in things like version control/GitHub support, seamless integration with commercially used IDEs/script editors, code-folding, etc, but no.
These things have been made possible to various degrees by contributions from individual devs, but never been fully integrated and never worked seamlessly. So apart from the very-different-from-anything-else language, the standard features used daily by developers in other languages are just not there. Add to this that the general perception of LiveCode amongst non-liveCoders is that it's a weak no-code platform (not in small part due to existing marketing and community websites), and it's no surprise that Pro devs have not flocked to this hidden gem of a platform.

LC is a great language, we all love it, and it is the quickest way to build an app. Coding is highly enjoyable in LiveCode.
But from the point of view of widespread adoption at pro level there are barriers and that’s before you even get to the pricing.

There are many discussions on the forums about the current and previous pricing models. Charging amateur developers prices that are viable only for large commercial teams can afford is, in my mind, not a viable strategy given the what most users seem to be using LC for (again, only LC knows for sure), and this is my personal criticism of LC's pricing strategy - not that they dropped a non-viable approach after many years of trying, but that the commercial model they have adopted is the least suitable for those that would be the majority of the existing user base. There are commercial success stories of larger teams using LiveCode, but by and large no one outside of LC knows about these.

The new Create licences are step in the right direction for indie devs as it more affordable than the "standard licence", although the badge, which we've not yet seen, is a possible point of conflict.
But it's sadly a step in the wrong direction for developers in employment to deliver solutions for an organisation, with the stipulation that every end-user needs to continue to pay a full licence to user this.

I guess it remains to be seen how well this will be taken up.
Stam

========
PS: For what it's worth - I think the best pricing model to follow would be the one that the Panorama X database uses: http://www.provue.com/#pricing
Something like this would be a great way to draw in users IMHO. Pay for the days you use only. Great concept because you can sell large volumes to those who know they'll be using this and allow new devs to test the waters safely...

[richmond62]

New York, New York, so good they named it twice!

[richmond62]

Stam's post is extremely interesting and talks about one or two points not previously covered.

The forums have been flooded with advice: good, bad, and indifferent; both after and before LiveCode dumped their FOSS version.

Ultimately the only thing that comes out of all this is that LC have never given any indication, beyond the odd bit of lip service, of listening to anyone on the forums.

The message that comes out of this is fairly clear:

"Take it or leave it as it is."

So, I would suggest anyone not accepting that message goes to where user input is admired and appreciated . . .

The fact that LC have stated that that alternative must not be mentioned or linked to here would, at least, indicate some unease on their part.

[bogs]

Putting myself into the shoes of anybody reading this post, I would probably be lost with terms such as MC, FOSS, etc. What do these acronyms mean?

I am sorry, Roland, I did poorly assume that anyone reading my reply would have some concept of the history which took place before LiveCode, indeed I am guessing that the greater bulk of people using LC (LiveCode) now have been playing this game since or close to the ending of HC (HyperCard).

However, I still should have given some idication of what the acronyms meant either before or after listing them. I'll skip the two above since I have clarified those already, and Stam already covered the questioned parts quite nicely <thanks Stam>.

For any who come upon this post wondering how we got to this point, some <brief / roughly accurate> history :

1. HC = Apple around the release of OS {Operating System} 6/7 includes for free HyperCard as a very high level scripting language to automate tasks in applications with the side benefit of largely being a semi complete programming language (some may debate how complete). At the time this was done, it was a pretty remarkable feat and considered extremely easy to learn compared to even VB (Visual Basic), however, also like VB was limited to the MS (Microsoft) OS, it was limited to Apple's OS.
2. MC = MetaCard came out shortly after Apple discontinued HC. Some few other xTalks also came out around this time, like SC(SuperCard). If you want to go down the whole xtalk language derivatives thing, well, private message me, it would likely be WAY too long for a thread , but the long and short of it winds up that MC was initially a linux thing and added the ability to distribute to multiple platforms (some 7 of the desktop available), and SC could distribute to Apple OS only, much like HC. I suspect that since this is one of the relatively few things that differentiate the 2 that it is also close to the main reason MC saw growth, since the main adherents to transcript likely were the ones disaffected by Apple dropping HC. No one from the VS (Visual Studio) or VB alone circle would likely have jumped to MC even if they had heard of it. Ditto for people using Pascal/Delphi, and I fall into those 2 camps at least during this point in history. ** {The previously mentioned studios are also the only time I've ever paid for an IDE.
3. RR = Runtime Revolution. Richmond actually gives a fairly accurate summation of this else where in a humorous manner, but to put it into only a few lines, and using company names instead of persons involved,

   Cross Worlds Computing developed applications on the MetaCard platform (e.g., Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor) and developed their own MetaCard IDE called Revolution. They agreed to take over MetaCard development adding the language and runtime to Revolution and changed their name to Runtime Revolution (RunRev). RunRev did not adapt the original MetaCard IDE and it was made available as free and open-source software via a Yahoo! group and a RunRev hosted mailing list. Runtime Revolution changed the name of Revolution to LiveCode and then changed their name to LiveCode, Ltd. as well.

That I think covers the majority of acronyms related to this or any conversation about LC.

And what was the contribution meant to say?

I have to admit I am a little confused about what this means, feel free to clarify. I quoted people whose points I was responding too, and put in additional thoughts of my own, what wasn't clear enough?

New direction of LiveCode
If the new direction of LiveCode has no appeal then it will not survive, otherwise it will flourish and we would see it.

I never said either of those, but it does come out that way doesn't it?

My suggestion could have been the opposite: Get rid of all the paid versions, make LiveCode completely free, but switch to a donation system and other means of income, sponsoring, end user products that solve real problems and sell, or focus on development teams as a service, etc. There are examples proving that such concepts can work. Appeal to the hundreds of thousands. When I look at LiveCode YouTube videos, they seem to attract about 3 to 7 likes. Or did I miss something?

This furthers their goal in what way, exactly? FOSS projects die on the vine all the time because of a distinct lack of interest, and the exact same can be said for proprietary software. Other projects eventually make money again regardless of whether they are FOSS or not. Charging (or not) *is* viable when there are enough people that find it valuable for them to do so. I found the language interesting enough to attempt to help in the way I did, but that was the limit of the value in it for me. Your mileage may differ.

I had a conversation with Brian M. one time, where I was pointing out a flaw in ( I believe) the geometry manager. His response was essentially "what difference would that small flaw make overall".

To me, the LC IDE is overall the greatest single display of the language, it is the one piece of software created in LC itself that ANYONE using Lc will touch and not have to go looking for (the supposedly mythical 'what other software was made with LC' question). If your primary example of your languages ability is a bug laden example put out by the company making the software itself, what does that say to your 'new user' ?

BTW, this isn't just the current iteration of the IDE, this goes back to the earliest examples I found of it, and continues through to the current with no interruptions.

My answer to BM was that I didn't know, it might cause a grumble, frustration, outright hostility, or (ultimately) someone deciding that even for free, it was not worth their time to use said software.

There are not just a few users having spent literally thousands of hours of their life time with this language. And they have nothing to say because it is not "their product"?

They can (and have) said what they want, you tell me the end result? From what I've read in literally thousands of posts across multiple platforms of response, it isn't their product, legally or figuratively.

There is so much to say and argue, contribute with suggestions and help and discuss, but why would anybody do this? Without enthusiasm and engaged users such a product will never fly.

Almost all of what there was to say has been said, many times, in many ways. Some argued, for myself, I find that very pointless. I do like a good point/counterpoint (Ask Richard if you don't believe me, I enjoyed those far more than he did I'm sure).

I agree that if you have engaged users the product will do better, but aside from those (relatively few) who come from a transcript language background and enjoy or excuse a shaky basis to build in, who are you going to engage? Your certainly not going to pull people from languages they are far more comfortable with (java/javascript, python, c/c++, basic, delphi, pascal, etc) over to this language by saying "...give up your incredibly advanced IDEs and tool-sets and come play with this one!"

If you believe you can, feel free to keep tilting at windmills, I often think underdogs are under-estimated.
Edited to add - As well, if your so sure you have the answer, go download the source, give it a new name, remove all references to MC, LC, LC Ltd., etc, and then market it however you see fit as it will then be your product.

Wishing the LiveCode team and all of you happiness and success.
Roland

Well, there is something I think we can both agree on, peace out Roland

[stam]

OK, now I don't feel so bad about the length of my previous post

Charging (or not) *is* viable when there are enough people that find it valuable for them to do so. I found the language interesting enough to attempt to help in the way I did, but that was the limit of the value in it for me.

You make a point - but pricing directly influences impressions of potential new users regardless of true or perceived value.
You (and I) find value, and pay the piper (up to a point though - there is a point where price is just too high). However recognition of this value requires prior experience with the platform, which is the Catch-22: To like LC you really have to already be a user of LC

Personally I would not have engaged at all had it not been for the lockdown 'pay as much as you can' offer - I paid a smaller amount for an indie licence to test and was then committed. And once committed I gradually realised the hidden value in LC and have been paying full licences since.
I had looked into LC before this, but had never been drawn in. It was too different from C-style or BASIC languages that it felt like a significant task/risk to learn a new platform for possibly little yield. Because from the outside, this yield was effectively invisible in spite its gargantuan size.

To me, the LC IDE is overall the greatest single display of the language, it is the one piece of software created in LC itself that ANYONE using Lc will touch and not have to go looking for (the supposedly mythical 'what other software was made with LC' question). If your primary example of your languages ability is a bug laden example put out by the company making the software itself, what does that say to your 'new user' ?

The current IDE is an obstacle to new users - it does not draw them in - quite the opposite. This has already been discussed in length.
So have the many other obstacles - lack of enticing examples of apps created in LC (usually just fragments of an app are available), a plethora of apps that belong on CDs published in the late 80s/early 90s, https://livecodeshare.runrev.com, GitHub (although that is now partially addressed), YouTube fragmentary tutorials; lessons that aren't lessons in a didactic sense but standalone, task orientated guides with usually very limited scope, when what was needed is a course, updated to current IDE and teaching how to build an app (or preferably, apps) of moderate complexity from start to end.

I could go on because these things have been present and annoying ever since I picked up LC properly 4 years ago - not because I need these things now for myself, but these are genuine obstacles to new users. And that matters to us all.

Hopefully LiveCode Create will address the IDE and perhaps some of other issues especially with the new widgets, even though I personally don't think Create's no-code/low-code/AI-generated-code slant is what will draw in the masses. I mean it's nice to have these, but really, the "easy-code" of current LC would do it for most, if only the IDE was just a lot more polished... with a lot less of "what difference would that small flaw make overall" mixed in...

[bogs]

by stam » Fri Dec 27, 2024 2:01 pm
OK, now I don't feel so bad about the length of my previous post

I don't remember if you were around for some of my real marathon posts from back in the day, in any case, I wouldn't feel bad if I were you

The current IDE is an obstacle to new users - it does not draw them in - quite the opposite.

Your being extremely nice in limiting the comment to the current IDE. Old IDEs don't matter to new users of course, but if you ever have the time to take a spin down history alley, try as many of the past IDEs as you can. The problems I described aren't limited to the new shiny (but still borked) IDE, but instead show a trend of never been fixed issues dating back decades. Somehow, those "small flaws" compound every release.

All the other points you made I have little or no disagreement with, but from where I'm sitting, that old saw about first impressions always rings true, and if your first impression is encountering the tool set your thinking about using for a long time made by the company trying to get paid to produce it and it isn't even close to many others, then I still say free or not, you're likely to go elsewhere.

That doesn't even start to cover the ground about (as Richard has said often) making sure your product at least has word of mouth going for it. On these forums, word of mouth isn't going to do much for you since the people likely to hear it are already here (or planning to be). I've seen the results of trying to pass information about this language on to others (such as on Reddit back in the day). The people using Python shut down the messenger in about 2 snips. This language isn't the only one with people who want to rabidly defend it you know.

Probably the best advertising of all (again mentioned MANY times in the past) is (MANY) someone(s) being successful using this software to promote themselves into another tax bracket (referring to all your "lack of enticing examples of apps created in LC" line), and displaying some portion of what they made and what the return their getting on it is, but again, I don't see that happening anytime soon. Not only do I not see that happening anytime soon but I still believe it will not bring someone over from a more traditional language regardless.

All I can really do is say I hope everything works out for all involved, my opinion on almost all of this means less than nothing since I have no stake in the game one way or the other.