LiveCode Commercial License

[Richard Gaskin]

JB wrote:

> Thank you for the information.  That sounds perfectly reasonable
> to me and isn’t really much different that the Rev license.  If
> you did not renew your license you did not get the new versions.
> The only difference is now you also are not allowed to continue
> writing with the version you licensed after it expires.

You can use the Community Edition for developing, obtaining a Commercial 
License only when you need to deploy a proprietary work.

The GPL that governs it is a distribution license, so it only applies 
when distributing your app - that is, it's only when you distribute your 
app to others that its source must be made available.

So hobbyists making tools for themselves, or corporations making apps 
for internal use, most uses of LiveCode Server, and many other scenarios 
are a good fit for the Community Edition. Right now more than 3/4 of 
LiveCode users are using the Community Edition.

The first item in this FAQ outlines various scenarios which apply to 
each license:
<http://livecode.com/support/ask-a-question/>

While RunRev's joining the trend toward subscription licensing may seem 
off-putting at first, if you think about it and look at the pricing 
you'll find that most of us are paying less than before.

The older Enterprise license was $500, while the new Indy Commercial 
license is just $299:
<http://livecode.com/livecode-licenses/>

Given the lower pricing, and most of us having renewed annually anyway 
to keep current with the engine, and the free availability of the 
Community Edition to develop with between deployments, the only folks 
adversely affected by the switch to subscription-based licensing is the 
relatively small subset who didn't renew annually but need to deploy 
proprietary apps frequently.

Such cases suggest an opportunity for considering open source:  If you 
have an app that is currently proprietary but not doing well enough in 
the market to cover even a $299 annual license, where's the ROI in 
keeping it proprietary?  The cost of maintaining your own licensing 
system, adding security to your app to enforce it, and handling support
obligations is probably far greater, further lowering your business' 
return.

If the GPL seems a good fit, it's more than just giving software away. 
The GPL is about receiving contributions from the community in terms of 
enhanced features and support.

The GPL is not the perfect solution for all needs. No single license is. 
  But it can be a very good fit where proliferation of the software is a 
goal.

And when an app is inviable as a proprietary work the fit gets even 
better: open source offers a way for the software to realize greater 
value in other ways beyond per-user license fees, allowing an app to 
reach a much larger audience and potentially garnering a community far 
greater than a company could afford to have on salary.

Open source is definitely a different way of thinking about software but 
worth considering for many reasons, and even more so when an app is held 
back by a lack of licensing revenue anyway.


As a side note:

While this article is about software used internally in an organization 
rather than distributed commercial apps, given that an estimated 95% of 
code is for internal use it may be of interest to some here with the 
cogent case it makes for using open source process for such things:

Why Your Company Needs To Write More Open Source Software
<http://readwrite.com/2014/08/15/open-source-software-business-zulily-erp-wall-street-journal>


-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys