Livecodeshare/SampleStacks

[Richard Gaskin]

hh wrote:

 >> Richard G. wrote:
 >> I'll try to remember to never try others' scripts using "import
 >> snapshot", like I'm already in the habit of never thinking about
 >> having a browser widget, or the ability to play a movie or audio
 >> file, or have windows layer in an expected fashion...
 >
 > The problem is that linux is for LiveCode a tiny niche.

Yep.  I'm familiar with the stats. In fact, I've even had another list 
user complain that I reference them too often, but like you I recognize 
that they are important for understanding ROI, for LC Ltd and for ourselves.

True enough, the desktop belongs to Windows. With its 86% market share, 
the desktop has always been a Windows story and it always will be.  Both 
macOS and Linux are niche players there.  Apple has the advantage of the 
boutique audience willing to spend more than their Win counterparts, so 
it's worth supporting their OSes.  Linux users work the other way, 
disproportionately into Free and Open software, so biz models dependent 
on per-seat licensing are challenged there.

One unique upside to the Linux audience favors dev tools in general, but 
not LiveCode specifically: they understand and contribute to open 
source.  Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP - name an open source language (which 
is most today) and you'll find a thriving contributor base.

In contrast, LiveCode's unique history works against contribution.  We 
have disproportionately fewer members versed in C++ than many other 
languages, so community engine contributions come from about half a 
dozen people (big THANK YOU to those who have!).  And although the one 
thing all LC devs have in common is a passion for LC Script, and the IDE 
half of the product is written in LC Script, we still see relatively few 
pull requests against the IDE.  No blame there, it kinda makes sense, 
given that most of this audience came up age in the '90s when 
development tools were still proprietary, so we don't have the same 
contributor culture most other modern languages do.

Another factor is the percentage of license holders among experienced 
users.  People who pay for a license feel entitled to a product that 
works as described, and can be less inclined to effectively pay a second 
time with labor.  Understandable, and quite different from audiences for 
languages which don't have a dual-license model.  MySQL is arguably an 
exception, but its market share is so uniquely vast that it defies 
realistic comparisons with anything else.

I believe the contribution problem will be addressed over time as the 
audience grows. The challenge is that the audience grows most slowly on 
the platform most accustomed to contribution, because it's the platform 
most seriously in need of contribution.  With such a weak out-of-the-box 
experience, it's an unusually imaginative soul who'll try LC on Linux 
and get excited about the potential.  A common phrase I hear is "It 
looks like they don't care about Linux."


 > And much more:
 > The linux users of the community are kind of "LiveCode masochists".

Many Linux users feel the same about other OSes.  Aside from the times 
I'm making fun of myself with a #fanboi tag, in more serious discussions 
I avoid fannish advocacy.

Windows, Mac, and Linux have all proven themselves for their respective 
audiences.  The Pengiuin has nothing to prove, any more than Mac does 
now that it's rebounded from its 2.2% market share.  Indeed, there are 
more Ubuntu users alone right now than the sum of all Mac users when 
Steve Jobs returned to Apple.

In our modern computing world we have a wealth of strong, viable options 
for every taste.  With OSes as with languages and text editors and 
hardware and the rest, enjoy what works for you.


 > Some are so advanced with that, that they meanwhile feel *very* strong
 > pain only (your list above).

Ah, but the point there was apparently lost in my poor writing.  I 
generally have no such limitations on the platform I currently spend the 
most time with.  Browsers, video editors, text editors, email, graphics 
tools -- pretty much everything I've enjoyed doing from my years when I 
spent more time on Mac, and the years I spent more time on Windows, all 
work excellently here on Ubuntu too.  The exception to that LiveCode.


 > For example you didn't even notice that SampleStacks didn't work for
 > weeks when using Business or Indy and, despite notification in the
 > list, both livecodeshare and SampleStacks didn't loamanyd stacks of
 > size > 2 MByte for two days.

Yeah, been working. Though I've read nearly every message on this list 
since it started, I miss a few.


 > Also your "GoLiveNet" (I really liked it) is unusable since more than
 > a year from Mac using Indy or Business (I wrote you and gave up).
 >
 > [It errors with message 'Error downloading URL "liveNet.livecode.gz".
 > Check network connection and proxy setup.'
 > One has to quit, open it in a community edition, quit community
 > edition, restart the Indy/Bussiness edition and relaunch GoLiveNet
 > (that now can use the cache).

Check your spam bin.  I recall thanking you for your report, and also 
noting in my reply that I was unable to reproduce it.  I just tried it 
again a moment ago - same good result.

I can check on macOS and Windows when I'm back in the office.  May be 
good to know which you're using.

At the moment I'm running Ubuntu 18.04, and I do nearly all of my work 
with an Indy edition, currently 9.5 on this laptop.


 > So probably a tsNet caused bug.

Could be. I really wish curl support were directly in the engine, or at 
least integrated with less obviously-not-native-to-LC syntax.  I can 
appreciate the expediency of bundling an existing third-party tool, and 
in the absence of any other support for the industry-standard curl lib I 
think we're all appreciative of Charles' excellent work.  But tsNet is 
an external, and it feels like one.


 > It is often too tedious to work around, I still feel the pain,
 > although I like LC on linux (on xubuntu especially).]

I've met some of the contributors to Xubuntu at the SoCal Linux Expo 
(coming up in March for anyone interested in going).  Xubuntu us a great 
distro, very well maintained.


 > p.s. Mark Wieder wrote an 'ugly workaround' (his own words) for
 > snapshot on linux, I use it in "QRReader". It works well, whether ugly
 > or not, also where the browser widget works (LC 9.0.5 on ubuntu1604).

Why my kvetching is personal, my interest is larger:

Many years ago I dreamed of one day meeting Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of 
Canonical, the company behind the most popular distro, Ubuntu.  The 
dream was sitting down with him to show him the unmatchable power of 
LiveCode for rapidly deploying UIs for enterprise apps, devops, and the 
other key segments he's focused on.  Maybe he'd bundle it.  Maybe he'd 
have an engineer contribute to it.  Maybe feature it at 
developer.ubuntu.com.  I don't know what could come of such a meeting, 
but it seems like a very natural intersection of positive interests. 
With more than 40 million desktop users, disproportionately strong with 
devs, it seems a good win-win worth aiming for.

Well, I finally met him a few years ago when I attended the Ubuntu 
Developer Summit in Oakland, and had some extensive time to speak with 
him more recently when we invited him to keynote our UbuCon event at the 
SoCal Linux Expo.

At long last, I'm finally in a position to ask for that meeting.

But LiveCode isn't.  Not on Linux.

So I wait, and continue to dream....

-- 
   Richard Gaskin
   Fourth World Systems
   Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
   ____________________________________________________________________
   Ambassador at FourthWorld.com             http://www.FourthWorld.com