"Introducing New LiveCode Licenses"

[Richmond]

On 10/29/2013 06:49 PM, Curry Kenworthy wrote:
>
> Richard Gaskin wrote:
>
>> With all due respect, any startup that can't budget $500/yr for a tool
>> that provides as much for them as LC does has a problem with their
>> business plan, not with LiveCode.

Um . . .

I am a person who relies for his income on an English as a Foreign 
Language school in Bulgaria, has
a bee in his bonnet about a program he develops for very personal 
reasons without ever expecting any sort of return beyond "pocket money".

I am not a startup, I am, in my own funny way, a serious programmer who 
has next to no money to spend on
his programming, who programmes on hardware that very many programmers 
would turn their noses up at.

Now, despite my patrician pretensions and patrician tones, I am also 
"the people's champion" insofar as
I am the voice of the hole-in-the-wall, spare-bedroom, 
cupboard-under-the-stairs programmer whose work is just as vital in its 
small way as those who develop Adobe Photoshop and other "gods" (excuse 
the blasphemy).

WE (The HITW, SB, CUTS programmers) are dead keen on Livecode (as are 
kids who are/were learning to program with Livecode) and cannot stump up 
oodles of boodle, yet would like to have the advantages of protected 
source code.

You ignore 'US' at your peril.

>>
>> For everyone else. free is a great price.  Remember that the GPL only
>> governs distributed works, so hobbyists and even professional devs
>> making in-house tools for the businesses they work in can use the
>> GPL-governed version.
>
> Howdy Richard,
>
> Very true! And here's the context. Some people are suggesting a free 
> Commercial version, and I was responding to Mark Wilcox. He noted that 
> a third of mobile appers are hobbyists, and: "Without a free 
> commercial option these people will not start a potentially commercial 
> (even small scale) project in LiveCode". Monte also commented on the 
> free idea.
>
> I don't think a free Commercial version would be good. We already have 
> a free version, and as you say, it's handy for many pursuits. Another 
> free version would be chaotic to my way of thinking, and probably 
> drive up the price of full licenses.
>
>> The only real value for a Commercial license is when shipping commercial
>> products.
>
> The FAQ indicates a Commercial license for submitting a free app to 
> the iOS store. Or a student or hobbyist may want to distribute some 
> preview copies for a desktop app to judge demand or conduct a beta 
> without releasing the source.
>
> And in the past, there were some cheaper licenses based on limited 
> platforms. These allowed people to pay their way when they didn't need 
> (or couldn't afford yet) the whole set. Nothing shabby about that, and 
> it worked well in the past. People went ahead and got the full set 
> when they could, because that was the better deal, but the platform 
> options were a stepping stone for some.
>
> But rest assured that I'm okay with your way of thinking. My beef is 
> with going free on any Commercial license. Since RunRev chose the open 
> source route for the free offering, I think some amount of money needs 
> to change hands for getting into closed source. How much that is, I'll 
> leave to you and Richmond to settle. :)
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Curry K.
>
>

A FREE commercial licence would be a huge mistake of RunRev; and there's 
and end to it. There is nothing to discuss in this respect.

Why?

Because as soon as RunRev releases a free commercial version their whole 
revenue system collapses because no one, but no one, is going to pay for 
anything any more.

What is needed is something to fill the excluded middle: I have already 
mentioned a rental idea.

Even that would be open to abuse.

Consider my own case:

My current thing, Devawriter Pro, is toddling along quite nicely on LC 4.5.
Now were RunRev to suddenly do something that could make my thing rather 
better,
such as sort out the Unicode substitution problem with Windows post-XP, 
I would, obviously toy with
the idea of purchasing a current commercial version.

I would have to balance my projected income (ha, ha; a finely tuned joke 
lurks somewhere there) with
how much I could spend. Now were my projected income to be less than, 
say, twice the cost of a Commercial licence I wouldn't bother.

Now, in the last year, I have made almost $150 (promise not to laugh) 
from sales of my Devawriter Pro,
so, unless I am even dafter than I am already, I cannot justify either 
to myself, or my wife, the expense of
buying any current commercial licence.

Now were RunRev to offer a weekly licence for about $100 I would work 
like mad to get my Devawriter Pro up to speed with any new features in 
current recensions of LC using the Community version, and then pay for a 
week's licence to pump out my locked standalones.

Free standalones to the app store are all very nice if one wants to push 
one's cult, or has more money than sense, but otherwise, as a commercial 
licence costs money, a load of old cobblers.

But then apps for the app store for 99 cents, where Apple gets most of 
that, don't strike me as much better.

When/If Apple stop being a bunch of galloping protectionists/monopolists 
and allow people to put on their iPads what they want without having to 
do dicky things such as jail-breaking I cannot see how anyone except for 
people who KNOW iPadders will download 50 million of their apps would 
even bother to make apps for iPad.

Richmond.