Commercial Indy License for HTML5

[Trevor DeVore]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 9:43 AM, Mark Schonewille <
m.schonewille at economy-x-talk.com> wrote:

> It is only remotely related to the issue that is of my concern, but it was
> suggested that one may connect to a server, such as PHP or OnRev,
> specifically to keep essential parts of the code locked and hidden. First,
> if I have to do this, it means that the obfuscation is insufficient and
> again I might as well make the source available and I have no incentive to
> buy a commercial license. Second, having to use another tool greatly
> reduces that appeal of LC HTML5 and I then would rather use PHP and JQuery
> for almost all web apps.
>

Mark et al,

I will preface this by saying that HTML5 export isn't something I'm
particularly interested in right now as my company doesn't have an
immediate need. We already have our web products running using existing
libraries. So I haven't been thinking about HTML5 too much other than how
the campaign benefits RunRev going forward.

I have also wondered whether or not people will pay for HTML5 output
licenses. It seems to me that the primary (I'm not saying the only) people
that LiveCode HTML5 output will appeal to will be people who don't need a
commercial license. I'm thinking educators and company employees developing
internal tools for a company (they don't need commercial licenses, do
they?). The commercial developer has a lot of CSS/JavaScript tools and
libraries available to them already and lots of programmers available that
know these tools. Based on what I've read, the LiveCode HTML5 deployment
won't necessarily be light weight which I think rules it out in many cases.
While there will probably be small business that will pay for HMTL5 output
from LiveCode, the question is whether or not there will be enough?

Now, there is a scenario where I could see some potential benefit for
commercial developers. What if LiveCode IDE became a front end for
generating output for the client (HTML/CSS/Javascript) and the server
(LiveCode)? A commercial app is always going to have their business logic
running on the server itself rather than the client. Perhaps if LiveCode
made it easy to create the HTML/CSS/Javascript front end AND made it easy
to connect that front end to the server calls then you may have a business
case.

For the server code I'm thinking of a tree interface in the IDE that
allowed you to build a tree representing the REST interface for the server
calls. You would place your scripts in the proper folder of the tree thus
creating the RESTful URI. You could then drag server script actions onto
your UI elements right inside of LiveCode. An example would be dragging a
PUT call to a server script that updated a database row onto the submit
button of a form. Clicking the button submits the form to the server which
in turn updates a data source. Or dragging a GET call to a server script
that listed 25 items at a time from a database onto a button in the UI. You
would essentially be developing your web UI and your server logic using the
exact same language. That could be cool.

One problem for me, however, is that currently the language is quite
limited when compared to Ruby on Rails and PHP. With LiveCode you can't
create custom objects in your code. When it comes to representing your own
business logic you are limited to functions and commands. When you take the
UI out of the equation (like you do with server side languages) I think it
becomes even more important that the language be as expressive with your
application specific objects as it is with the objects that are built in.
PHP and Ruby allow you to do that. LiveCode does not. At least not yet.

Once Open Language arrives, however, LiveCode will become much more
interesting (in my view) as a web development language. With open language
we will be able to define the english-like syntax for any objects that we
need for the business logic in our own applications. That will be really
powerful.

Anyhow, just some thoughts as I don't fully understand how HTML 5 will
generate revenue just yet. I know Kevin and the team have put a lot of
thought into this and I don't doubt that there are a lot of people that
want to use it. I'm just not sure how it will pay for itself going forward.

-- 
Trevor DeVore
Blue Mango Learning Systems
www.screensteps.com    -    www.clarify-it.com