Trying to make economic sense of open sourcing livecode

[Monte Goulding]

I believe the intention is to have a rewards for contributors to the engine. Points that go towards commercial licenses. That's just a bonus though. I think what's most likely to happen is something like this:

RunRev will do most feature development
A developer hits a bug when working on an app
If they know C++ then they might try and fix it. If not they might report it.
If RunRev are too slow and it's a blocker the developer could pay someone to fix it and submit to RunRev.

I'm still waiting for RunRev's response on the last point relating to how the Enterprise license fits in here. For example, if I could own the enterprise license and fix a bug for someone then send a pull request against the GPL repo and build for people with commercial licenses there could be some work there but I don't know how the restrictions apply. Do my clients also need enterprise to release with the modified engine. Am I permitted to distribute LC with a modified engine. Perhaps RunRev would like to keep this kind of quick turnaround paid bug fixing service for themselves which is entirely in their rights to do and might be a good business decision for them.

One interesting idea for RunRev would be for them to allow Enterprise license holders to name their C++ developer. It's a single seat license but perhaps its reasonable (seeing as C++ knowledge is rare around here) that the source access could be given to a third party thereby enabling only distribution of the modified engine between the C++ dev and the Enterprise license holder. I guess this could be done using the extra seat which I think is going to be $2500. So perhaps if someone wants me to be their C++ dev on engine work they need to buy enterprise then buy me a seat on their license??? Not sure how it's all going to work but I do know there's lots of new possibilities that will come out of all of this so it's going to be fun working it all out.

On 02/02/2013, at 8:06 AM, Peter Haworth <pete at lcsql.com> wrote:

> OK, makes some kind of sense.
> Pete
> lcSQL Software <http://www.lcsql.com>
> 
> 
> On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Mark Schonewille <
> m.schonewille at economy-x-talk.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Pete,
>> 
>> Yeah, you're missing the point, kind of. Everyone who contributes can also
>> use all contributions by everyone else and when you contribute, you make it
>> more attractive to others to cntribute too. That's the reward of
>> open-source software and there is no reason for any additional compensation.

--
Monte Goulding

M E R Goulding - software development services
mergExt - There's an external for that!