Kickstarter 2013 Revisited

Sun May 10 11:35:28 EDT 2015

I meant Richmond - though I do think the two of you would make a fine team
of good cop - bad cop :)

On Sunday, May 10, 2015, David Bovill <david at viral.academy> wrote:

> Thanks for taking the time to air this Richard. I generally agree with the
> sentiment. I'd see much of this being resolved by redefining the nature of
> the interface between LiveCode Ltd and the community. The diaogue is not
> there suficiently. It's not there with regard to roadmaps, the on-rev
> server outage, and the Kickstarter goals.
>
> You have my vote to be sent to Edinburgh to investigate and report back?
> You speak the same language after all :)
>
>
> On Sunday, May 10, 2015, Richmond <richmondmathewson at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','richmondmathewson at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>
>> 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?
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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?
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 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".
>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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).
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
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>