reporting

[Mark Talluto]

On May 14, 2015, at 7:36 AM, Mike Kerner <MikeKerner at roadrunner.com> wrote:

> Has anybody done anything to replace quartam reports, since it seems to
> have reached the stage of abandon ware?


I believe Quartam Reports is open source now. I am curious what the general thoughts are on situations like this. 

QR was a closed source, pay for access software. It received regular updates from Jan Schenkel. It was and may still be the pinnacle of reporting for LiveCode developers.

From my very informal analysis, the general response to developer announcing they are going open source is: “it is about time”, or simply “this is the way I like to get my software”. Many times, the key developer in 3rd party tools like this move on to other projects. This leaves these tools open, but not really under development any longer. I am sure Jan had his reasons for moving QR to open source. There is a general peer pressure to do so with 3rd party tools. 

I would rather the developer sell the 3rd party tool under closed source in return for regular development that progresses the tool further. I do not want software to go open source if it means imminent death of yet another useful tool.

Are 3rd party developers not charging enough to make developing tools viable?
Is the LiveCode community not large enough to support such development models?
Do you agree with me or do you like the way things are going?  

Are we really getting what we need when we get what we want?

Best regards,

Mark Talluto
livecloud.io
canelasoftware.com