Kickstarter 2013 Revisited

[Richmond]

So, it is now some 2 and a half years since the Kickstarter
which launched Runtime Revolution LiveCode as an Open Source
project.

Very many people contributed to that Kickstarter campaign.

So it might be instructive to look at the following things:

1. How many of the goals have been achieved?

2. How many of the goals have not materialised?

3. How many of the goals have not materialised because they have been 
conveniently forgotten?
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Let me pause for a moment to have a few thoughts about the nature of 
contracts:

a. A contract is where a group of people undertake to fulfil certain 
promises in return for something else.

b. A contract can be a formal agreement, often written down and 
witnessed by others. It can, however, be informal and
mutually understood - based on trust.

c. A contract is normally understood to contain several items or events 
that are to be delivered within a stipulated amount of time.
    Normally if those items or events are not delivered within the time 
stipulated there are penalties to pay.

d. I would like to characterise the LiveCode Kickstarter campaign as 
setting up a number of contracts between Runtime Revolution
     and the donors to the campaign.
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The best place to check on the goals would seem to be here: 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1755283828/open-source-edition-of-livecode/posts/439754

where there is a hyperlink "Visit it now" - but that takes the user to 
the LiveCode blog.

Here: 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1755283828/open-source-edition-of-livecode/posts/415346

We can read this:

"Delivery Estimate

Reaching these totals means that we will start work on these items in 
parallel. Some of these items do have dependencies on other items being 
completed first (Pluggable Themes & Cocoa is essential before Windows RT 
for example). We'll work to deliver those items with dependencies as 
quickly as we can. We expect to be able to deliver everything within a 
few months of the main release."

Which is, either intentionally or not, untrue.

One of the Kickstarter goals was a new GUI: we still do not have that.

Importing SVG files does not seem to work (LC 7.0.0).

"Windows/Phone 8 with Theme": where is that?
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Several times I have stated that I think RunRev are so busy racing 
towards "the bright new future" they are forgetting about
a lot of other things.

If a contract based on trust is broken, then one wonders whether 
participants in that contract should go on trusting the participant(s)
who betrayed that trust.

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I did not donate to the HTML5 kickstarter campaign for 2 reasons:

1. My funds are extremely limited.

2. Why should I donate to a kickstarter when the terms of the previous 
one were very far from being honoured?

Had things been different I would have found money to donate to the 
HTML5 campaign.

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Anecdotal breathing space ---------------------

Every 2 or 3 months the parents of children I teach English to pay me 
money in advance for teaching and ancillary goods and services
[textbooks, pencils, fruit tea, and so on].

If I then didn't turn up to teach those kids, very quickly I would be 
out of a job and my reputation would be mud; as it would also be if
I didn't take very great pains to make sure that my teaching is focussed 
and of a high quality.

The parents of the children who teach me take a risk every time they pay 
me: however, it is a calculated risk based on my previous
performance (after 10 years it is reasonably good). It would, however, 
only take one "cock up" to ruin that reputation instantly.

Not very long ago I was walking along the river here in Plovdiv, and I 
saw a notice for a new EFL school, and wandered in. The only person 
there was a woman who I remembered seeing before in a similar situation 
3 years before. I asked her how business was going, to which she replied 
that
it wasn't. Subsequent "sniffing around" turned up that that woman had 
closed a previous school owing parents chunks of money two years before:
she had, as one of my Mum's friends says "shat on her own doorstep".

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I am also tired of those who "sing from the RunRev choir" [RG, JLG, and 
so on] who endlessly seem to defend the indefensible at
no obvious profit to themselves.

What is needed is an itemised list of all the Kickstarter goals and 
stretch goals; when those that have been reached were reached,
a realistic chart of when those that haven't been reached will be 
reached, and an explanation of exactly why RunRev have engaged in
other projects before they have completed all those goals.

I suspect that some of the Kickstarter goals have been quietly dropped; 
either because they have turned out, on closer examination,
to be unreasonably difficult to implement, or because RunRev have got 
distracted by objects just over the horizon. These points
also need to be addressed.

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http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-livecode/2014-April/200290.html

http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-livecode/2014-April/200853.html

http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/New-Visual-Editor-td4678215.html

This last one is interesting as it contains a link to a page that DID 
contain the mockup for a new GUI, but RunRev have silently changed that
so it is no longer there.

It seems amazing to me that having received quite a sum of money from 
the 2 kickstarter campaigns RunRev seems not to
feel some sort of accountability to the donors - a tee shirt is not 
accountability (especially if what is written on that tee-shirt
is only a broken promise).

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I have taken quite some time to write this, and the reason that I have 
taken the trouble is that, oddly enough, I both believe in Runtime
Revolution, and have put a very significant amount of time and effort 
into learning how to get the thing to do things over the last 14 years.

Had I come to it just before the Open Source Kickstarter campaign I 
don't think I would have bothered, and I don't think I would be working
with LiveCode just now.

Richmond.