Some afterthoughts concerning the enigma of "generic players"

[J. Landman Gay]

Wilhelm Sanke wrote:

> Hi Jacqueline,
> 
> if your interpretation of the intentions of RunRev would be fully 
> endorsed by RunRev themselves (I take it you are near to the inner 
> circle of RunRev, but not actually a spokes(wo)man?), this would be 
> another step in the right direction.

Yes, you have it right. My situation with the company is awkward 
sometimes. Because I help with the tech support database, I have more 
direct access to the team and I can ask them questions. But because I am 
not really a part of the company, I don't know the details of their 
daily operations. That leaves me in a state of half-knowing a lot of 
stuff. When I post to the lists, I think of myself as just another user 
like anyone else and I don't mean to represent the company in any way. 
But I realize that I probably have internalized some information that 
others don't have. It is a strange dual existence.

At any rate, I asked Kevin about the license agreement and he has told 
me that he understands they need to make a more specific statement about 
it. He says he will be posting a more exact definition within the next 
week or so, in order to clarify exactly what Runtime means. He knows 
that the current license can be misinterpreted and wants to get feedback 
about the final wording to make sure it is satisfactory to everyone.


> Applying your definition above, the player indeed does not have the 
> "sole purpose of providing "player" capabilities for
> stacks unrelated to my own software".  In that sense it surely does not 
> fall in the "strange animal" category like Ken's Stackrunner, as you put 
> it above.--

That's right. Your player is okay. I can say this, because I 
specifically asked Kevin about it this morning. Now, maybe it 
technically violates the terms of the license as it is currently 
written. However, RR really isn't too concerned about private players 
that you make with your licensed version of Revolution, and which are 
intended to play back stacks for your students -- even though they might 
be used for other purposes. The limitations on your player will be no 
different from Rev's "official" player. The script limits are still in 
place. There is no script editor. It does not allow stack authoring in 
the same sense that Rev's IDE does. So it's okay.


> But above all my guess of other players being at least around (if not 
> immediately available) was based on the fact that it is quite simple to 
> put together an elementary generic player. All you need is a stack with 
> two buttons:

Right. And I don't think RR is very concerned about this. Really, all 
they are trying to do is keep their branding foremost and to remain the 
"official" Runtime player. This becomes more important for Media users, 
because we do want them to remember Runtime and hopefully upgrade in the 
future. It's in everyone's interest to grow the community.

That said, I think (my opinion, not "official") that the intent of the 
license is what matters most to RR, regardless of the final wording in 
the license. They want users to be aware whenever a stack opens that 
Runtime is behind the architecture. If you have a custom player that 
your students use, or a few of your friends, or some people on the list, 
that's fine. If, however, you release a generic player that is intended 
to replace Runtime's -- and thus, decrease their market perception -- 
then that's against everyone's interests.

> An "all-purpose" player would need to include all possible resources for 
> any kind of stacks, meaning including all libraries, dlls, i.e. about 
> half or more of the whole IDE and its supplementary stacks.

RR knows that. They have learned from the mistakes in the DC player. I 
am assured that the new one will be able to open all kinds of stacks and 
will have the necessary resources.

> The 
> students get a restricted generic player, capable of  running stacks 
> with a specific extension other than "mc" or "rev". Thus we are flexibly 
> able to provide for download and learning stacks of small size that can 
> be easily updated or we can even add new stacks with different filenames.-

Then I would say you have much less than a generic player; you have met 
any possible licensing terms. Your player opens only a subset of stacks 
which you supply. It contains only the resources that your stacks 
require. It is much less than "generic". No problem.

> Coming back to the question of the "enforcement" of a new policy.
> Let us imagine someone produces a generic player and even sells it as a 
> commercial application you have to pay for. How could that possibly hurt 
> RunRev in any way if they offer an even "free" player? As RunRev does 
> not "sell" their player, how could an alternative player impair them? An 
> alternative player would possibly show the variety of solutions feasable 
> with such wonderful X-talk languages and therefore support and promote 
> the distribution and acceptance of Metacard/Revolution - and not 
> excluding the possibility that the RunRev team may even gain new 
> insights from solutions they could not bring about at the moment, 
> because there are so many tasks at hand to be solved. Every creative 
> effort from other members of the Rev community should be honored and is 
> a possible contribution to improvement.-

I don't know the answer to this. It makes sense to me, but we may not 
know the reasons that would rule against it.

> 
> A last remark: At some place of the discussion I remember the new 
> "Media" brand of Revolution was mentioned as one reason to introduce a 
> restricted player policy(?). We do not yet know much about "Media", as 
> it is not yet released (although you can already pay for it), so I have 
> to reserve judgment here. But if this really is the underlying issue and 
> it is really important to set "Media" definitely apart from "Studio", 
> "Dreamcard" etc. - which I cannot imagine why in terms of running such 
> stacks - then it must be easy to configure "Media" and its player in 
> such a way that other generic players produced with other brands of 
> Revolution cannot open and run Media stacks.

Media files are specifically tagged, but I don't know what the official 
Player will do yet.


-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com