Hi all,
I recently posted on the forums in reply to being asked why the PDF
external is initially going to be exclusive to Business edition, and I
thought it would be useful to cross-post it here.
http://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=27160#p141910
I am the main advocate for LiveCode Open Source within the LiveCode
core dev team, and maybe I can address some of these issues.
The core dev team needs to eat and pay rent, so LiveCode Ltd. has to
make some money to help support LiveCode development. The vast
majority of work we do (90%+) goes directly into the Open Source
edition of LiveCode. To raise money to pay the core dev team's
salaries, the company sells Indy and Business subscriptions that let
people make closed-source programs with LiveCode.
The revenue needs to grow, so that the core dev team can expand, so
that all the things that people are asking for (like Raspberry Pi
support, further work on HTML5 deployment, an improved networking
library, etc.) can be created. This means getting more people to pay
for subscriptions. However, many users don't think that Indy and
Business are good value for money because "all" that they get is
closed-source deployment. To help these users justify upgrading to a
subscription, the company has bought in some externals from 3rd party
vendors and bundled them into the Indy and Business editions -- first
mergExt, and now a PDF external.
At the moment, I am struggling in internal discussions when I argue
for bringing neat new features to the Open Source edition. Evidence
over the last year or so suggests that adding a feature to the
Business or Indy edition makes a much bigger boost to subscription
revenue -- revenue which funds improvements and maintenance of all
editions of LiveCode. Even when you consider the new Business-only
features like the PDF viewer, these still reflect a minority of the
work we do; taking these into account still leaves almost all the
work we do going directly into the Open Source edition of LiveCode.
In many ways, I feel that at the moment the best way to get the
resources required for maintaining and improving the Open Source
edition of LiveCode is actually to add Business-only features. Do you
have a better idea? For example, some people have suggested keeping
the source code on GitHub but charging people for access to Community
builds as a way to get revenue to support the Open Source edition.
What do you think?
I know there are a lot of people who use the Open Source edition of
LiveCode on this mailing list, and I would appreciate your feedback.
Peter
--
Dr Peter Brett <peter.br...@livecode.com>
LiveCode Open Source Team
LiveCode 2016 Conference: https://livecode.com/edinburgh-2016/
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