license issues (was mystery exception)

[Robert Brenstein]

>If all you wanted to do was give away a 12-year effort in crafting a highly
>optimized scripting engine by just slapping a five-minute UI on it, you'd
>have to work a litte harder than that.
>
>Admittedly I'm having a tough time thinking of a commercially viable
>opportunity for an app that truly needs dynamic scripting and doesn't
>compete with Rev....
>

I don't really want to prolong this thread but you guys seem to think 
that I would want to produce a generic application that allows to run 
any transcript code user wants, an evil program that will run Rev to 
bankrupcy. May be I have not clearly conveyed my use but your 
assumptions are far from reality. I have the same vested interest in 
MC and Rev prospering for years as you do.

Admitedly, the application of do in my project would be kinda unusual 
and very few people may indeed need it. However, I don't think my 
desired usage is illegitimate or endangers Rev as a product in any 
way. Users in my case would enter code that is more like Fortran or 
Pascal which I convert internally into (reasonably complex) 
Transcript and execute via do. However, there is no way to have this 
internally generated code under 10 lines since multiple repeat loops 
are involved.

Furthermore, the starting point of this thread was that 
MC/Revolution's license explicitely allows me to produce and 
distribute standalones without any further royalties.

    Using Revolution, you can deliver powerful, fully-featured
    applications on all major platforms - quickly, easily, and
    royalty-free.

Unfortunately, the engine imposes the limit on the do length in those 
-- the fact of which is not clearly stated up front. This is also 
evidenced by a number of people admitting the surprise when they 
found it out the hard way, although in their cases it was not a 
showstopper. This discussion should be not as much about my shareware 
program ruining 12-year effort but about false/misleading advertising.

Also, suggesting that users of my program get own Rev licenses is a 
bit silly -- if my users were required to do so, why any other 
Rev-based shareware programs should be different? Are WebMerge users 
required to purchase Rev or MC?

>For the very small set of tasks that truly require "do", taking a moment to
>break them into 10-line chunks would suffice for many of them; more complex
>needs will require more effort, but they should anyway:

Executing code in 10-line chunks is not a solution for me because of 
(anticipated) significant degradation of performance and because of 
repeat loops within that cod (I haven't tested but I doubt that I can 
have begin repeat and end repeat in different do statements).

>The problem with this is that the message box is just a stack. If 
>there were no script limits, the user could just type a script into 
>a field in any stack, then put "do me" into the field script.

But then what stops users from running 10 lines at a time in a loop 
rather than simple "do me"? The fact is that MC and Rev folks do not 
mind people using the limited stack for fairly complex stuff, and 
they explicitely allow us to use starter kit to produce and 
distribute commercial applications. There are publically available 
tips and tricks how to do that.

It is just sad that at the same time they do not provide means of 
overcoming this do restriction for legitimate uses in standalone 
applications (even if this was on case by case basis).

Robert