New Indy License Pricing

Andrew Kluthe andrew at ctech.me
Wed Jul 22 09:16:40 EDT 2015


Richard,

It's not an issue of earnestness or integrity but of what has been
delivered vs what we were told was going to be delivered.

There is a huge gap between the way things looked when they were presented
to us in April 2013 and the way they look today.

This has been the point of conversation on this list several times. It
isn't a result of being dishonest or the other amusing caricatures you
painted to make a point. It is the result of lets pile more things we might
be able deliver on so that we can get more funding from excited people. Had
the best of intentions, just didn't pan out like they planned.

Will things all be delivered? Yeah, probably. But how many more major
version numbers will it take? How many of them will turn into additional
kickstarters when their revenue stream dries up? Are many of these features
going to end up being mac specific when it gets down to finding out how
hard they are to make cross platform?

That's what I mean when I say trust. Brand fetishism just isn't enough to
live on anymore. The actual performance as a company lately, frankly,
sucks. Since, I know you are going to want examples of why someone might
feel this way:

- On-rev (do I really need to say more? Search the list for on-rev)

-The documentation is scattered, sparse, and most of the code samples are
images. Fun.

-The website is going down an awful lot rendering the point above moot as
it's not available.

-Everything i mentioned above about the disappointments that followed the
"delivery" of the kickstarter campaign.

Runrev's track record isn't dishonesty, it's being confident that they can
follow through on the things they set out to do and do them well. So this
admittance from Kevin that they spent 2x what they raised on the
kickstarter to build Livecode 7 continues to point to that.

On Tue, Jul 21, 2015 at 4:35 PM Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com>
wrote:

> Andrew Kluthe wrote:
>
>  > Price Increase? No big deal.
>
> Even less so when we consider that the "new" price was the price before
> last year's experiment with lower prices.  In fact, it's only $4 more
> than I used to pay for annual renewals with MetaCard back in '98, after
> paying an initial licensing fee of $995.
>
> Some talk about this like it's tennis shoes or other commodities, "Just
> lower the price to sell more!"
>
> The total addressable market for software developer tools is a slender
> fraction of what most consumer apps can aim for.  Look at the bell curve
> and remember that a person needs an IQ of at least 115 just to begin to
> find programming at all interesting.  Race-to-the-bottom pricing just
> doesn't work for such a highly specialized product that can only appeal
> to a relatively slender slice of the gene pool.  Everyone needs shoes,
> but few have any interest at all in programming.
>
>
>  > Commercial vs Open Source Feature Parity? Could also be no big deal
>  > if done with some good intentions.
>
> So far there's been only feature parity, and the only thing Kevin
> discussed in his email is a single Widget add-on for exotic camera
> features, which takes nothing away from any of the other front- or
> back-facing camera commands we have on mobile now, or any of the webcam
> and other image input support on the desktop.
>
> And while I can appreciate Kevin's desire to come up with supplemental
> revenue streams, I suspect he'll find that add-on components for a
> developer tool isn't exactly easy money, so I don't expect this to be a
> major trend.
>
>
>  > Only Subscription licensing? No big deal, helps keep costs down for
>  > us to stay bleeding edge and helps stabilize the income runrev can
>  > count on.
>
> And not at all new.  The switch to subscriptions went into effect more
> than two years ago when the Community Edition premiered.
>
>
>  > But all three of these together? It's kind of obvious why people are
>  > complaining/suspicious of the long term intentions here.
>
> Given that two of those three aren't new and the third (a proprietary
> add-on) doesn't even exist yet, it's less clear to me.
>
> Or maybe it's no more mystifying than anything else we see in any
> reasonably sizable Internet community.  As a population grows to reflect
> larger demographics, we can expect a portion of any group to disagree
> with changes within that group.  And given human nature, those who are
> satisfied with the change will be happily enjoying it rather than
> writing about it, giving disproportionate voice to a relatively small
> subset of the group.
>
> We see this with nearly every aspect of collective human activity, from
> politics to products.
>
> A casual observer might count dissenting posts, but if we look at
> dissenting people the number is much smaller.  And if we look at the
> audience size as a whole and compare the number of dissenting people to
> that, the proportionality becomes even clearer.
>
> This isn't to suggest that contrary views shouldn't be discussed.
> Sometimes great ideas come from vigorous debate.
>
> But the repetition is sometimes a bit much, and in any social situation
> it's always useful to avoid presumptions of bad intentions.
>
>
>  > The issue is trust. In trusting runrev to know how to walk the fine
>  > line with the commercial features/licensing, not any of the issues
>  > individually.
>  > Not everyone is just going to take them for their word with this stuff
>  > anymore.
>
> Why not?
>
> You noted that none of those issues is a big deal at all, so what
> exactly has changed?
>
> When we believe we may have reasons to question someone's future
> behaviors, more informative than conjecture would be to review past
> performance.
>
> We can imagine all sorts of stuff.  I can dream up a world in which
> Kevin graduated from the Larry Ellison School of Annoying Open Source
> Communities, laughing at us all under his top hat in between chomps on
> his cigar as he removes his monacle to say, "Ha!  I fooled you all!"
> There's no limit to the human imagination.
>
> Or we could just look at actual observable performance.
>
> Sure, the company has their share of missteps, and arguably some details
> of the wording of that email are among them.
>
> But what has Kevin or anyone else there ever done to exhibit anything
> less than earnestness in delivering on their stated objectives?
>
> Sure, they don't always get everything right. And like the other 84% of
> projects Steven McConnell reviewed from ACM literature in writing his
> books, they've discovered they're not the first company that can make
> extremely ambitious goals involving complete rewrites across seven
> platforms and do it all on their original estimated schedule.
>
> Lots of areas to improve, in their company, and mine, and perhaps those
> of some of the others here.
>
> But earnestness and integrity?  I've seen nothing that would make me
> question that.
>
> --
>   Richard Gaskin
>   Fourth World Systems
>   Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
>   ____________________________________________________________________
>   Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com
>
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