Livecode Create - thoughts?

[stam]

Software licences in this context are not unheard of and up to 5% is not unreasonable in my view.
Having a badge saying "created with LiveCode - not for profit" for free apps is also reasonable in my view - but would ideally be something tasteful that would drive interest in people looking at LiveCode rather than some potentially crude device to make developers not create free apps.

We all realise that LC needs a solid income stream and clearly everyone here is aware of this and wants LC to continue excelling and would pay a licence if they could. They make the point that while one may sell software for the development and maintenance efforts, this is in effect distributing LC's IP and yes, this is comes at a cost and LC ltd are, in my view, entitled to a tiny proportion of profits from its commercialisation.

But the "internal users" cost is suddenly increasing the cost by thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands per year, which will not go down well with any company, be it a multimillion multinational or not. It completely removes any benefit for or incentive to use independent developers (since cost will now rival or exceed professional developer outfits). As James says, definitions need clearing up and clarifications are needed.

[Simon Knight]

Having started this thread and also followed similar threads on the Use-Livecode list I conclude that the licensing is rather a shambles that has caused a lot of confusion and distress. Many terms need proper definitions for example is the National Health Service (NHS) a business or commercial organisation?

Having apps that "phone home" just won't work on many company servers and each case needs to be discussed with RunRev Ltd.

Lifetime license owners were initially told tough but now following what is described as a "Miss step" have some form of arrangement. Others with price lock deals have nothing similar (yes I have one).

The full price per internal user make no sense to me or quite a few other people.

RunRev Ltd have written that the cost of Livecode development runs at a loss and is supported by their consulting arm. I believe them but I wonder if the consulting arm uses Livecode. If so it could be argued that we are reducing their costs so are supporting them.

RunRev Ltd have written that many business users of Livecode are entirely happy with the changes. It would be interesting to know their business use cases.

Many large organisations install Microsoft Office 365 on there employees machines, anyone trying to justify the cost of two or more internal seats at $440 will most likely be told go use VBA.

My present License allows me to build applications and do what I will with them. The new license scheme removes this freedom and is the principle reason why I shall not be buying a license for an unfinished, sight unseen product. Its time for change and take a close look at Swift, Flutter and Python.

best wishes
Simon

[SparkOut]

It's confusing and concerning for sure
A big question is where LiveCode Server fits in, as well as the per seat scenario for apps.
Heather's inbox must be really stuffed.

[stam]

After with most everything you say, except:

Many terms need proper definitions for example is the National Health Service (NHS) a business or commercial organisation?

This is not a definition that is dependent on LC. You might as well ask them to clarify if the UK government, the police force, the Army or Navy are businesses or commercial organisations.

The answer of course is neither. It is in the governments own interest to make it seem like the NHS is an independent business so they can drop it at some convenient point in the future but the reality is that this is led, regulated, staffed, organised and paid for entirely by the government, with the the help of taxes (“NHS contributions”).

This is the only way to provide high quality universal healthcare and not only to those to can afford it (and it can be extremely expensive), as happens in the USA where sadly 1/3 of the population cannot afford it and where healthcare remains the #1 cause of personal bankruptcy. And I might add the cost per capita in the US is nearly doubled that of the UK as we do run everything of a shoestring budget, and until recently (ie the government that just went out) we had some of the best outcomes worldwide.

But enough ranting about the specific case of the NHS, that applies to the UK only.

The wider point to make is if LiveCode/RunRev Ltd will consider government run organisations as business or commercial organisations? Is the Army either of these for example?


But apart from this one point I agree with you - the loss of freedoms is enough to consider a change and I have just under a year left to decide (until my current licence runs out.


I understand the point they are making - that if using their IP they should be entitled to small potion/royalties and I don’t disagree actually.

Other IDEs implement something similar under the guise of offering opensource & commercial licences (eg. Qt, Unreal Engine) but I’m pretty sure the moneys they’re asking for are both higher but also only apply to those with very significant sales, which is probably not the majority of the LC customer base at present at least.
And I’m fairly sure (although might be wrong because I have paid the high fees these IDEs command for their commercial versions).

This continues to feel confusing & rushed and I’m curious as to how many will take this up…

[Zax]

the loss of freedoms is enough to consider a change

Exactly.
Beyond the financial considerations and the undoubtedly complicated calculations to make LC more profitable, finding yourself in a very restrictive complex system is absolutely prohibitive.

[richmond62]

a very restrictive complex system

To a very large extent this is of LiveCode's own making.

A while ago, with my language school, I had what I thought was an innivative fee structure, with special rates for children with single mothers, gypsies, unemployed people, siblings of children already attending my school.

What resulted was a lot of shouting, name calling, and bad blood.

I thought I was being both clever and generous: obviously not the former!

I now have a flat fee!

Of course there are one or two 'cases' where Mum turns up and pays one day,
and Mum comes round the next day and collects a white envelope from me: but everyone is SEEN to pay the flat fee.

------

LiveCode have played "ringing the changes" with their fee structure for many years, and I am surprised they have not learnt that "a very restrictive complex system" really doesn't benefit anyone (least of all them).

Possibly the most risible thing was where one could buy a limited time licence where all the standalones generated from it would expire at the same time as the IDE.

-------
I OWN LiveCode 4.5, and I use 4.5 very occasionally because some 'very odd' people I know seem to be perfectly happy chuntering along with iMAC G5 PPC computers, and also seem perfectly happy with me maintaining a niche program I made for them, initially, 18 years ago.

I do the programming on a 32-bit Intel imac using MacOS 10.6 "Snow Leopard".

If I thought that I would have to ask those people to pay for an LC license to use my software (which they could not: think for a moment about the sort of salary a Bulgarian librarian is likely to receive) to do what seems to me important work (cataloguing, digitising, and writing descriptions of thousands of documents from the last 500 years of Bulgarian history) I don't know what I would do.

The software has to keep being rejigged as more and more manuscripts come to light with 'kinky' accents, alphabetic forms, punctuation (normally used by one monk sitting in his cell 400 years ago who thought he was being clever: not realising that Richmond would be cursing him in the future).
-------

I am just waiting for some wag to say:

"That's silly Richmond with a silly, marginal case in a silly marginal country."

And, in some ways at least they would be right.

But what my silly, marginal case in a silly marginal country does serve to show is how odd the current licensing seems to be.

AND what I was told when I studied Philosophy at Durham was that to really show how utterly daft situations were one had to "push the envelope" (no, not the ones I'm sneaking to disadvantaged parents). I can assure you that my funny program for Bulgarian libraries was never meant to push any sort of envelope whatsoever, it was designed to serve a purpose (a purpose it has served very well for 18 years). But from what I gather from reading the latest licensing cafuffle would probably not be possible.

Consider: a standalone cloned across 45 machines and maintained at the price of 25 Euros per year (that's what they pay me, and for that they probably get about 2 hours attention a month: which is sufficient for their needs), used in a country which is, frankly right at the bottom of the treacle well in the European Union, is so corrupt that were I to start charging "real money" for my work I would start attracting attention from rather unsavoury people. And, cut it whichever way you like, Bulgaria (for all its rotten current state) has a literature of pan-European value which deserves to be preserved.

----

All this "very restrictive complex system" is doing is driving even more customers away than were driven away by previous fairly self-destructive acts.

This is extremely sad, as LiveCode ('Classic' at least) is 'the real deal' which is very rapidly going down the tubes for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the IDE itself.

[AndyP]

Richmond,

(normally used by one monk sitting in his cell 400 years ago who thought he was being clever: not realising that Richmond would be cursing him in the future).

Well that made me giggle, which had not been the case since the announcement.

I still have a 3.2 version, and thought even then that RunRev Revolution as it was then was the bee's knees, and I still think that about what is now being named LiveCode Classic.

In my opinion the new licencing options will drive existing long standing and devoted users (who will also have been avid promoters of LiveCode) away. Potential new commercial/business users will in a lot of cases take a quick look at LiveCode Create and go wow! what a great potential product then use the licencing calculator, be in shock and then move to the next potential product offering on their list of app building products to check out.

It's a shame that licencing allays seems to be a mess and poorly thought out.

[richmond62]

I'm glad to have made you giggle: everything else is extremely depressing.

[AndyP]

I think to be fair and transparent, I should mention that I am one of the fortunate ones that have a lifetime licence. So I have done very well in respect of licencing fees. I have however supported all of the crowd funding campaigns.
When lifetime was offered to me I was a hobby coder so I really had to justify the cost (with my wife) at that time. It was a lot of money for me at that time.

Anyway moving on to the present, and a real life example of what the LiveCode Create licencing will do.

I'm now employed as a coder (on a very modest income) thanks mainly to LiveCode and my posting on Fiverr (but that's another story). With LiveCode, I was able to build a working prototype in 10 days for my employer to test. [Edit, it was this prototype that secured me the job] I would not have been able to do this in any other language in my opinion. This is a complicated product, involving auto conencting a usb Com port to gather rs232 data from a load cells ADC, running automated tests on that data, collecting the data in csv format and at the same time displaying the data in a live multiline graph. At the end of each test run the program creates a pdf with all the test data including a screen capture of the graph.

So paying for a license is now doable when lifetime comes to an end. Although I believe it would be better for LiveCode to keep the licencing servers running for those who still want to keep and use the end of life unsupported version 10, under a new pricing to respect the non supported nature of the product.

After that preamble, let's move on to the licencing with LiveCode Create.

For the company I work for, the licencing model would be Internal Apps. Using the licencing calculator, with the current number of copies of the app in use, the yearly cost to the company would be around $14,000 (including the volumn discount) a year plus my wages! At the moment this is just the cost of my wages.

This is unworkable.
I'm on holiday at the moment and this will be an interesting conversation when I get back! I should also mention that I am a remote worker, which also reduces office and running costs in respect of my work for the company

I thought that when LiveCode announced that they would be moving to a new type of LiveCode that the current offering (Classic) might be dropped, so I have for the last 6 months been porting to Python. Yes 6 months so far (including learning Python)! Python's no LiveCode in respect of ease of use but I'm about 80% there.

I just wish it didn't have to come to this.

[FourthWorld]

I just wish it didn't have to come to this.

Consider the asset already in hand:

The ability to produce native GUI applications for every major platform with relative ease.

That's powerful.

That's why we're all here.

That's what's paid the bills all these years.

It could use some tidying here and there, but they already own it.

It exists today.

And there are almost NO COMPETITORS.

Take a moment and let that sink in.

--

I believe there is, even now, a path forward for a company of reasonable size to earn reasonable profits from the core mission.

That priority alignment later opens the door for extensions beyond the main mission to be resumed, financed by those profits.

But all of this is wholly dependent on growth.

Doubling the user base Is achievable, possibly within one year.

But it will require taking Ram Dass' guidance:
"Be here now."

The asset in hand is also the most valuable, and with the least competition:

The ability to produce native GUI applications for every major platform with relative ease.

Focus on the core mission.
Remove the pain points.
Market it with pride.
Be here now.

[SparkOut]

I am essentially a hobbyist, I used to be a freelancer and did a bit of this and that and some (typically simple) coding projects built with LiveCode, on a one-off bespoke basis for several clients. The largest fee ever charged was a few hundred pounds. Rarely. I still have a couple of contacts for whom I might tweak something or add a new feature. I don't sell a product, but I might get "an hour" or "a couple of hours" rate.
There are several jobs I did in the past with LiveCode Server which are still running to automate stock levels for a web shop, although 95% of these have been migrated away as my client's client chose different hosting and back end setup. I've done a couple of hours a year maintenance in the last 5 or so years.
I made a few gizmos to enhance the puzzles in my daughter's escape room business, at no cost, of course (now closed, since Covid...) but not the sort of thing I could put a "Made with LiveCode" banner on.
Despite never being a commercial money-spinner for me, I have loved using LiveCode and the means it gave me to "appear professional". Despite honestly being so strapped in many years it meant a choice between maintaining a subscription and turning the heating on in winter, I have always kept up my subscription. I am really confused about where I stand with the new licensing model. Concerned about what it means for me. My one subscription is not going to change LiveCode's fortunes. It is going to determine whether I can continue or sadly close the door on coding at all. Boo hoo. I'm not the commercial target LiveCode needs, but LiveCode is why I have been here nigh 20 years.

[FourthWorld]

It's super cool that your daughter ran an escape room company. Hopefully she'll be able to get back into that if she's up for it. The immersive spaces segment is still a good growth area, and ripe for new twists on experience design.

[speedbump1981]

Personally as a hobbyist I have to decide the upgrade is worth the additional cost. The licensing options are interesting and look good on paper but I do wonder how they will work in the real world.

Sadly, I can no longer afford my LiveCode license.

I've been unemployed for 16 months straight, and I haven't had a good idea in years. I canceled my license renewal earlier this month and started migrating to an open-source alternative (you know which one). Call me an interloper; I don't care. I haven't been a serious developer in years, and my social anxiety has become so debilitating that I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to return to independent contracting.

I hope this new direction goes well for LiveCode, I really do. I just can't afford to participate any longer. Good luck, folks!

[stam]

And there are almost NO COMPETITORS.

Take a moment and let that sink in.

XOJO, Flutter, B4X, Qt, Python, Kotlin multiplatform, Ionic, .NET MAUI, Lazarus , to mention a number of options for cross-platform GUI development straight off the top of my head.

Granted, all here, myself included, prefer LiveCode because we think it's the best for our use-cases. But to say there's "almost no competition" for writing cross-platform GUI applications is factually misleading.

And importantly: users of these other platforms all think their option is the best. Most have never even heard of LC.

Many of these other options are free or much cheaper than LC at present even before taking into account the internal users pricing. The internal users pricing strategy will easily catapult LC into the top of the big-hitters league pricing wise. Will that really help expand user base?

That's the aspect of all of this I can't quite comprehend.
It takes what is a reasonable licensing fee, a reasonable royalty fee and suddenly goes nuts because you're using this within your organisation catapulting the price to levels that smaller developers would never be able to afford and larger corporations would likely not pay for.

And speaking of organisations, it may be difficult for LC and others here to comprehend, but there is a world of difference between a for-profit corporation and a non-profit/government-run organisation, where funding is much more limited, the IT is likely to be bound to Microsoft-based monolithic structures (at least in the UK) and where using something like LC is frowned upon. Asking for ~£10K - £25K per year just to run custom software simply will not fly.

I came to LC in part because of the unsustainable new pricing structure for FileMaker Pro (where I have a high level of expertise) but with the internal users pricing, I'm not sure I see a difference in pricing now. These are not trivial considerations for large number of current LC users - or prospective clients.

I would say, well just release as free software with a banner that will probably be lame (even though I've paid a subscription). But the FAQ wording leaves no doubt that is not acceptable if I share standalones with colleagues and co-workers.

I'm sure those who develop software exclusively for sale will be happy with changes (I too would be OK with that). For those of us to specifically code solutions for "internal users" are suddenly in an unsuitable position.

In case you missed it:

I build bespoke apps for clients, do my clients end users need a license?
Yes, they do, if the users for the app are within an organization or can be named as individuals. If the app you built for your client is subsequently sold as an app store app or via a website as a generic app, then application payments will apply to the app.

I build apps which I sell to the general public, via an appstore or my website. Do my end users need a license each?
No, in this case you need to make application payments on your app.

Can I pick whichever licensing model I like?
You must pick the model that corresponds to the way in which you are using LiveCode Create. If you have internal users of your apps within an organisation you must choose Internal Users, and if you are selling apps to the general public, you must choose Application Payments.

So here is the bit that is difficult to stomach:
If I sell software, my clients don't need a licence. If I "make custom software" for clients then each user also needs and annual licence - ie. a cost that would almost certainly be orders of magnitude higher that the royalty from sales - annually. Mull this over a bit. And while you're doing that, realise also that you can't both sell software and use for "internal users" with the same licence. At least that's how I interpret these statements.

The internal users pricing makes this automatically unsustainable for me and others, but what really rankles is the restriction of being forced to do one OR the other.

I'm still not clear what the case is if the developer is the only 'named user' for internal use, i.e. where the developer makes standalones for themselves only - will 2 licences be required? and if the developer then decides to make software to sell, will a 3rd licence be needed to choose "Application Payments' licensing instead?

Yes, I'm deeply confused by these pricing options.

At the end of the day we all want LC to succeed and flourish, and key to this is getting more people interested in LC.
Will the above inspire confidence in new users?
Will it keep on users that have been loyal for years?

[FourthWorld]

See "nearly".

And see that you're here despite those.

And see the integrated IDE experience, which has led us to a world where Python is the most popular language in the world but there are likely more LC apps in the app stores than Python.

And compare to point-and-click web app tools, of which there are many more. Some with deep deep pockets.

Nothing is without competition, but multiplatform native app deployment is the asset they have.