"Introducing New LiveCode Licenses"

Wed Oct 30 13:09:00 EDT 2013

Hi All

I have keep quite about this subject, but I now see how many other users
are trying to express their concerns. Actually the decision to raise
license fees is not the main issue that concerns me. It is the way LiveCode
management is looking to the community to pay their bills. If you have
great products like Apple, your products bring in the revenue, not fees
placed on the developers.

Since I have only been using LiveCode since July of this year, in no way do
I consider myself an expert. But, after 35 years working with businesses to
develop software, database management systems. I found LiveCode and began
evaluating it starting in July.
I have used countless different versions of developed software over the
years, LiveCode is not that much different than programs I have used in the
past. LiveCode has the potential to be major player in mobile software
development. Unfortunately it looks like current business decisions for
licensing are influencing the user community. From what I'm reading
inconsistency is the issue when it comes to licensing. My first impression
is that annual license of $500 is expensive compared to other products. No
matter what price it is what really matters is whether the user community
will put up with additional costs.

At the center of this discussion is the license value. Along with the value
of the content, user documentation, and support provided. The business
decisions to charge additional fees for what should be included in the
product literature and media is the question.

Premium support either direct or through a forum is not unusual. With
LiveCode new users are dealing with learning LiveCode where the basic
documentation is scattered in such a way that I found it very difficult to
learn the basics of LiveCode. One example illustrates where the user
community is taking on responsibility of improving the user documentation.
Scott McDonald recently provided a bibliography website where for the first
time I have been able to locate obscure documentation, lessons, code
examples useful format. I'm not trying to indict the LiveCode support
organization, but it's obvious that new users, and season programmers are
struggling with poor documentation. Many of the current website lessons are
outdated, and this is not a recent development since the lessons go back to
2005 to 2009.

LiveCode management picked a bad time to increase fees for support when the
basic documentation of LiveCode is in such bad shape. My investment in
LiveCode has been countless hours of trying to find even basic code
structures, and script examples. The how-to email illustrates the need for
better documentation. The user community does not need premium support,
they need basic support. The LiveCode dictionary is so poorly designed that
as a new user I found it to be more confusing than enlightening. The lack
of code examples is the primary difficulty in learning LiveCode! I found
lessons provided on the LiveCode site to be inconsistent, misleading and
incomplete.

It's clear to me that you want to attract new users to LiveCode, To do so
you need to improve basic documentation before you start asking for fees
for premium support. Frankly I found it shocking that you don't understand
how bad your documentation really is. You have a good product in the market
that needs a rapid development platform. If you want to attract new users,
or retain people like me, you need to listen to us or I will only be a one
time subscriber.

Thank you

Vaughn Clement

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On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 9:27 AM, Richard Gaskin
<ambassador at fourthworld.com>wrote:

> 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<http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys>
>
>
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