[OT] Xojo

[Richard Gaskin]

Sri wrote:
> Importantly, Xojo's license terms are much better. You don't lose the
> commercial license if you stop renewing annually. You simply stop receiving
> the updates.

That can indeed be beneficial for some, but now that LiveCode also 
offers an open source option like most modern programming languages, in 
practical terms the difference in proprietary licensing affects only a 
relatively small subset of users.

Most professional devs who need to deploy proprietary works upgrade 
annually to keep current with the latest features.  For that segment the 
cost remains about what it was before.

Nearly everyone else can use LiveCode Community Edition at no cost at 
all.  For those folks the cost has dropped infinitely, to zero.

It's only the subset of developers making proprietary works who need a 
Commercial license, and most are doing so under a business plan that 
brings in far more revenue than is needed to cover the cost of renewal.

For such commercial works, the cost of an annual license should be the 
least of their concerns.  To remain a viable product the work should be 
producing a positive ROI that also accounts for their own development 
time, marketing costs, etc., adding up to far more than the $500/yr for 
the other 80% of the app delivered by the RunRev team in the engine.

If a project isn't financially viable enough to even cover a Commercial 
license fee, it may be worth considering releasing the work as open 
source instead.  The audience will be much larger, and the project then 
has the opportunity to also benefit from outside contributions.   And 
with the larger audience, if the proprietary licensing fees were pulling 
in less than $500/yr, you might even find that a donation link or grant 
funding opportunities may bring in more revenue under open source than 
the licensing fees did.

Having come from the xTalk family of languages where all the great ones 
were old enough to have been proprietary, many LiveCode devs have 
relatively little experience with the world of options open source 
deployment opens up for us all.

I was one of those, and it's only been in the last few years that I've 
come to appreciate how open source can be a good option for many projects.

--
  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