> I think most people are quite happy with the license restrictions that
> metacard uses. Personally I think we should be thankful that we don't need
> to purchase a license each time we distribute a standalone.
More than thankful. Elated is more like it!
Licence-free distribution of standalones is one of the cornerstones of MetaCard's
appeal, particularly in Education. If we had to negotiate and pay-for licences for our
standalones, we would definitely think-twice on small vertical projects and so on.
There is more to be elated about than just this though. The Starter-Kit's licencing is
truly wonderful. Absolutely free. No limitations built-in, such as the
all-too-frequent "can't print" or "can't save" or "expires after..." limitations of
most 'demos'. The only limitation is the 10-line-per-script limit and it's not really
that limiting. Most of my clients (Education) don't script very much, or at all; and
the 10-line-script limit can easily be circumvented with modular design, file I/O,
internet I/O; and the limit does not apply to playback (e.g. only when authoring
scripts).
And now, because of my "say it ain't so Joe" plea for help, regarding how to
distribute standalones/stacks such that they can be 'saved', we discover that we can
take an empty stack, add one "go to stack ..." button to it, save it as a standalone,
and freely distribute the MC stack and standalone, such that the standalone 'plays'
the MC stack without the presence of MC itself. Wow!
This has to be the absolute-best licencing scheme that I have ever heard of, Better
even than my most optimistic expectations. Personally, I am blown away! The only
"fly-in-the-ointment", so to speak, is that this licencing is too-good-to-be-true and
may be substantially revised someday, e.g. become more constrained. So far this is a
totally un-founded fear though :)
Kudos to MetaCard for its visionary licencing scheme,
Alain Farmer
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