"Introducing New LiveCode Licenses"

[Richard Gaskin]

Richmond wrote:

 > So . . . if one of my pupils builds a stack with LC Community
 > that s/he wants to turn into a code-protected standalone, and
 > I run off standalones for them for whatever target platforms
 > they have in mind, I am breaking 'the' law?

What are these students writing that has economic value significant 
enough to need to keep it proprietary, yet not significant enough to 
cover the cost of a proprietary license?

With all due respect, this is fundamentally a business plan problem.

Identify the opportunity, exploit it, and if it can't turn at least 
US$600 in sales ($500 plus 20% profit) then there may be other ways to 
monetize the work to bring a positive ROI, such as advertising, 
donations, grant funding, crowd funding, external strategic investment 
(e.g. IBM invests millions in free software because it helps create a 
platform for their service revenue), etc.

And if a positive ROI just isn't possible at all, consider sharing it 
with the world as LiveCode's GPL version itself does, which has its own 
rewards in creating a world which has an ever-larger community code base.

There's an opportunity here to expand the lesson from mere coding to 
include entrepreneurship.

When we consider the many organizations like Athgo International, 
OpenWorld.com, and others that teach entrepreneurial skills to young 
people around the world, this becomes less crazy that it might seem at 
first glance.  Learning to start and grow a business is liberating, 
sometimes life-changing, and benefits everyone in their community.

The most empowering code a young person can learn is the formula for 
measuring return on investment:

put ( tTotalProductRevenue - tTotalCostToAcquireRevenue ) \
   / tTotalCostToAcquireRevenue into tROI

--
  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