LiveCode community edition is gone

[Rick Harrison]

Hi Dan,

Yes, there were a lot of us who specifically contributed to make the Community version possible
as open source.  One of the justifications was that if the company went under we would still have
the Community version available to us. The promise that the company would also support it was
equally appealing. While the original intent was to use the Community version to widen the user
base, and get more paying customers, it apparently didn’t get enough of them to be able to
justify sustaining the Community version. 

I can understand why there are users who feel betrayed by the company especially with the new 
pricing structure, and the discontinuance of support for the Community version which was even 
paid for in a marketing campaign in advance of it’s release.

It can seem that the company keeps increasing it’s prices while taking away functionality by
forcing users to select which specific platforms to be able to deploy to. That seems to go against 
the idea of coding once and being able to deploy to all platforms in one affordable package.

Access to the Community version is still very important as that is how many users were first 
introduced to LiveCode who then became paying customers. I believe the try it before buying 
model is still very important for helping users to make the purchase decision.

It would be nice if the company were willing to provide the final version of the Community 
version under an MIT license instead of GPL since they will no longer be supporting it at all, and 
it marks a true fork in the road from the codebase going forward.  That might make the transition
easier to accept for some users. Continually making users of your product feel disappointed
or angry isn’t a good marketing strategy.  The happier you can make your customers the better
your business will be!

I think it’s great that the CEO is interested in negotiating with those users who feel they can’t
afford the new pricing structure, which is certainly something one would never see with
large companies like Disney.

The LC community is going through a shock with so much change that had no gradual hints
about it. Acceptance of the changes will take time as it always does, but we will adjust.

Just my 2 cent observations for the day.

Rick

> On Sep 1, 2021, at 11:44 AM, Dan Brown via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> That's a bit harsh, are you forgetting the amount of money that was
> contributed by users to the fund raisers over the years?  > $600k
>