Popup menus

Alain Farmer alain_farmer at yahoo.com
Sat Feb 18 16:03:25 CST 2006


Hello y'all.

> I cannot even imagine what new features
> I'm missing out on with my older version
> of MC. I look forward to upgrading this
> year to Rev. :-)

You can't miss something you never had! IOW, I'm doing
fine with MetaCard 2.5 .. I don't really feel the need
to 'upgrade' to Rev. Apparently.. Rev has improved the
web stuff,,. this is kind-of tempting. They now have a
lib for doing XML-RPC = pretty cool!, but is it enough
to justify the cost (likely); or, more grievosuly, the
change in licencing terms? More on this after the next
two quotes.

> Jacque: However, the licensing requirements
> in 2.7 have changed and it is no longer
> legal to build a custom player.

> Kevin (paraphrased): It *never* was legal
> to build a custom player.

MetaCard Inc's licencing is/was FAR more liberal than
Rev's is [or ever will be!?]. From the very beginning,
Runtime Inc prohibited creating an authoring tool that
might compete with Rev! .. even though that's what Rev
is well-suited for!.. it would never holdup in court,
I'm pretty sure of that. Then they made matters worse:
with further changes (restrictions) to their licence,
plus a *one-shot* demo that times-out with no renewal
possible. And now a prohibition on custom standalones.
Why so restrictive ???

> By the way Scott and Kevin, thank you both
> for producing such a great product. I hope
> you sell lots of licenses so that you
> continue to upgrade and maintain it :-)

I agree with Shari that the MetaCard-engine is a fine
product that should be perpetuated and, thankfully, it
has been taken-up, maintained and improved by Runtime.
I understand their need to make money from the sale of
licences; albeit this is *increasingly difficult* for
ANY proprietary software these days! I am, or perhaps
was, considering upgrading to Rev (at last!) but I'm
thrown-off by their [draconnian] licencing terms; in
particular their [new] restriction against creating
custom standalones .. ouch!  Say it ain't so .. Joe,
please .. say it ain't so .. here's hoping that this
restriction only applies to the lesser licences, e.g.
that the "Enterprise" licence, for example, allows for
the crafting of custom players. What say you, Kevin?
Please clarify your licencing terms, as well as their
SCOPE, so that we can make an informed decision as to
whether it's advisable for us to upgrade to Rev [2.7]
or not.

No flame intended,

Alain

P.S.: For what it is worth, and I realize that it
might sound like folly to you, I suggest that you
lessen your licencing grip, allow building custom
standalones for ALL licences, allow the Rev-based
authoring of tools that might 'compete' with Rev (it
is much more likely that they will *complement* it).

P.P.S.: Does the FreeGUI project still have a PASS
(green light) with regard to your licencing clause
that normally prohibits the Rev-based authoring of
tools that might 'compete' with Rev ?

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


More information about the metacard mailing list