Is forever really forever?

[richmond62]

Kevin Miller has moved to England.

[dunbarx]

Richmond.

Is this news ominous, terrific or not news at all?

Craig

[richmond62]

I really don't know, but someone else was looking at Livecode's company records and pointed out several odd things.

[jacque]

There's nothing odd about it. The team is not always concentrated in Edinburgh, many work remotely. We live in a connected world, I'm surprised anyone would think it matters.

We've hijacked this thread again.

[richmond62]

We've hijacked this thread again.

Not completely as the subject is 'forever' (a subjective subject).

And what becomes crystal clear . . .

from the records of the LiveCode company in Britain is that nothing is 'forever' and nothing is quite what it seems.

https://find-and-update.company-informa ... 28/charges

[stam]

from the records of the LiveCode company in Britain is that nothing is 'forever' and nothing is quite what it seems.
https://find-and-update.company-informa ... 28/charges

Is this link news to you? This is an old story and while I don't understand the legalese, my impression was that this concluded about 3 years ago. But in truth I don't know, the language used in these documents is impenetrable to non-lawyers.

I suspect this just reflects the really tough times the company and its staff have had to go through to keep the company going while everyone was complaining about stuff not being free. While some of this hardship can be attributed to LC Ltd's own choices, it's clear they've been through the mill to keep this going.
However laudable though, this has permanently dented the uptake and spread of LiveCode.
Loyal devs have stayed, but natural attrition, unsustainable policies, and a no-mans land of half baked products are likely to dent that further still.

It's a real pity, but sentiment can only carry a company so far and if it doesn't deliver... well...

I love the language and the immediacy of the code.
I don't need newfangled widgets and AI - they're nice if they work as expected and are well documented, but at best only 1 of those conditions is satisfied and often neither are. What I do need is well-documented functionality that makes coding quicker and my life easier.

I need an IDE that caters for project organisation, collaboration, version control, integration with code editors, AI etc.

I need it to be financially viable, which includes the concept of apps still running even when my subscription lapses but more importantly it has to be at least easily affordable, if not free - not for me personally, but for all, because if only handful pay for this there will never be any growth in the ecosystem, let alone the company.

I had hoped LC10 (as originally advertised) and compiled scripts would address some of this, but with it morphing to LC Create and with how things are going years down the line, I have serious doubts about maintaining a subscription. Which also means I've basically stopped using LC because with the stupid new policy of apps expiring if/when a subscription expires.
I just can't invest any sane amount of time into LC any more and am using other tools so I can be sure that if I do build something it will keep working no matter what.

I do hope that LC pulls this off, but for now I'm not convinced I'll ever see that, more's the pity.
Is forever really forever? No. Everything changes and it always feels that it never changes for the better...

[richmond62]

You could always take a walk on the wild side: both the Open Source continuation IDE and the web-browser implementation.

Forever is never forever: but some good folk are prolonging 'things' for a bit.

[stam]

You could always take a walk on the wild side: both the Open Source continuation IDE and the web-browser implementation.

Forever is never forever: but some good folk are prolonging 'things' for a bit.

The “wild side” as you call it is not (yet?) fit for my purposes. Webtalk, while cute and surprisingly performant, feels like a toy and needs a lot more development for it to useful in the sense I need it to be. As for OpenXTalk, I’ve yet to be able to run the IDE as it is not codesigned, I’m on latest OSX and I will not switch off security to run this.

Then there’s the long term view - where are these products going? Will they be developed further professionally or remain hobby projects of a few individuals?

For my purposes I need robust technologies that will evolve to stay current with new OS’s and the apps they create need to be bulletproof and performant. That means I need a bulletproof and feature complete platform now, not at some indeterminate point in the future.

At present I’m using another niche environment as a stopgap, but will be transitioning to mainstream toolchains as there also needs to be some forward planning - these can’t all run by my input alone, these need to be in an accessible language so that others can take over in the event something happens to be for example.

That was the long answer.

The short answer is that no, I will not be following Lou Reed’s advice to “walk on the wild side”…

[dunbarx]

Maybe it was always naive to believe that the software first touted as for the "rest of us" could ever survive growing up in the world we currently live in. The good ol' days are for the most part gone, in whatever guise that phrase applies. That is normal.

Again, I hope that the silence felt among usual crowd on this forum, whose roots go back to Hypercard, and LiveCode, Ltd., is because they have outgrown us. Think of parents watching their kids grow up and move away. Sad, but hopefully happy down deep.

Except that we are the kids...

Craig