Trying to make economic sense of open sourcing livecode

[Richard Gaskin]

François Chaplais wrote:
 > OK, open source is the cure for cancer...
 > So I spend months, which become years implementing, say, a decent
 > math library for Livecode....
 > Who pays the rent?????

Alternative answer:

You may not need to write the library at all, but instead find that 
someone else has already written it for you.

Something we haven't considered much here is an aspect Todd Geist and I 
were discussing yesterday:  community.

When a software goes open source, esp. a dev tool or programming 
language, the community will grow many times larger than it was, with 
contributions coming from people you've never heard of a year earlier.

Our little corner of the world is about to grow.  A lot.  Many new names 
will show up in the list and on the forums.  As gene pools go, there may 
be a malcontent or two along the way, but mostly what we'll see are 
eager young programmers looking to LiveCode as a way to learn, and 
contribute, and make a name for themselves.

They want to help, but many of the big projects already have their bases 
covered, so a language like LiveCode is a great opportunity to 
contribute in many valuable ways.

And because LiveCode is really two languages, an engine in C++ and the 
high-level scripting we use with it, there are more opportunities to 
contribute than most dev tools provide.

Through this new generation of LiveTalkers we can expect to see dozens 
of classic algos translated into LiveCode for community use.

If we can pull this off with the Kickstarter campaign, we'll arrive on 
the other side in an exciting new place:  everything we've loved about 
the language and the community for years, just a heckuva lot more of it.

So the math library you're looking for may already be written by the 
time you need it.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  Follow me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys