Can I use Revolution for this?

Scott Raney raney at metacard.com
Sat Aug 3 12:54:01 EDT 2002


On Sat, 3 Aug 2002 Rodney Somerstein <rodneys at io.com> wrote:

> I think that you have hit the nail on the head, so to speak. While 
> you are trying to be polite and not judge Revolution on this, it 
> seems that they are limiting things for just the reasons that you 
> state.
> 
> Again, the question is, why should I have to go through this? By 
> paying for the license, I should be able to create a stack to do 
> pretty much whatever I want without having to jump through such 
> hoops.

Even if this freedom means it would be trivial to put Runtime
Revolution and MetaCard Corporation out of business?  I mean, it would
take you all of 10 minutes to create your own Home stack, and post it
to public sites (for free download) and instantly eliminate almost all
sales of both products.  Which of course result in the ceassation of
all future development of either?  Seems a pretty high price to pay
for "freedom"...

> At the very least, all of these limits should be doubled for 
> standalones produced from a licensed copy of Revolution. That too is 
> arbitrary, but would still protect Run Rev from their evident fear of 
> my producing a competing product. It also rewards me for purchasing 
> the product from them by lifting some of the limits imposed on 
> standalones produced without giving them some income (i.e., only 
> using the starter kit.)

Unfortunately there is no way to distinguish standalones produced with
licensed versions from those produced with the Starter Kit.  All
engines are the same, regardless of where they came from or how
they're being used.  It's not practical to make it work any other way.

> Of course, if these limits are actually imposed by MetaCard, I don't 
> know if there is any easy way around this for them. However, they 
> could still push to have all of these limits increased. It would make 
> the product more applicable to a wider range of developers. If 
> HyperCard were cross-platform and still produced, I wouldn't have to 
> deal with these issues.

And if pigs had wings... ;-)

And as has been pointed out ad nauseum on the HC mailing list: if HC
had a viable business model, it would still be being produced.  The
fact that it's not tells you something was seriously wrong in how it
was produced and/or sold.

> It is interesting that there have been no comments from anyone at 
> RunRev. I suspect they are all on vacation right now.

I guess something from MetaCard will have to do: it's absolutely
preposterous to even propose that all Starter Kit limits be
eliminated.  That would essentially put us in the shareware business,
which is not a viable model for a product in this category.

There's really one one other option in this area, and that's the
license that SuperCard uses which leaves it up to the vendor to decide
whether or not your product competes with them and to prohibit
distribution if they think it does.  And the previous owners of
SuperCard had, in fact, used that clause to stop distribution of one
of their customer's products with the result that that other company
was forced out of business.  Talk about your loss of freedom...

If you have a real need to produce a product that requires unlimited
scripting, we'd be happy to discuss an OEM/reseller license with you.
It's much more invasive that the existing EULA (e.g., it would be
per-copy royalty based), but completely frees you from the limits
imposed in the Starter Kit.
  Regards,
    Scott

> -Rodney

********************************************************
Scott Raney  raney at metacard.com  http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...






More information about the use-livecode mailing list