I came back and ... What?!

[Dar Scott]

Projects have required a bit of my wandering, a bit of dalliance on my part. I have come back and I find bright lights and confetti, but the floor and steps are painted black.

I need some guidance.

(I am not even able to get the latest LiveCode and find that my subscription had been cancelled. I imagine Heather will fix all that.)

This is partly my fault, I didn’t have a good way to separate the LiveCode marketing emails from here-is-an-important-message-about-your-account.

I am fully willing to try LiveCode Create. Maybe there are less bugs in the engine. This might be good for creating bread and butter applications.

But, the pricing scheme is constraining and complicated. 

About 3/4 of what I deliver are library stacks for those who develop using LiveCode. I am assuming that I can deliver those without any royalties or whatever they are. This should not impact me. However, I wonder if some of my customers might be moving away from LiveCode because of the pricing model. I will most likely get things resolved so I can deliver library stacks. 

The pricing scheme for executables is a blocker for the other 1/4 and my in-house usage. 

A three page appendix to my proposal for a new or old customer explaining how the customer has to pay additional fees for using the software part of what I deliver, will kill any agreement right there. The best I can do is propose applications and then hand it over LiveCode to a Python programmer and say “please rewrite this in Python”.  And in the middle or after a project, I cannot say, “No problem; here is a tiny program that monitors the status of the machines.” Or the REST connections or whatever. Overall, I was not able to find a way to provide my customer with a prepaid indefinite license. 

And in-house. It was nice to say to a EE in the lab, “Here is something I whipped up last night to get the data from the prototype and the oscilloscope.” I don’t want to add next time, “And figure out the red tape and requisition a couple months of using the program.”  What kind of leader would I be if I say, “No, these are my tools. I made them. You cannot use them. Mine. Mine."

I’m in a quandary over whether to buy Create today (or wait until the LiveCode license problem is fixed).

And then there is my surprise to learn $36.67 X 12 = $660.

I know most of you have had to weather this. I welcome advice. 

Fondly remembering you folks,

Dar