I sent this a week ago from an email address that wasn’t my ‘list subscribed’ email so it never appeared. I hope this gets out to the list in general (note to list admins, bin the earlier one).
Begins: In a futile attempt to ingratiate myself with the mothership and after reading Curry’s warnings about EULAs, I’ve had a think along these lines .. but be warned, I’ve only had a single coffee this morning (so far) 1. The “apps won’t run” approach seems to reflect a transition of the whole internet thing more than something unique to a LC licensing model .. translate that as the days of building apps and having a user download, install them on 20 computers, and expect security bug fix/updates forever and a day are probably over. 2. The emerging concept of ‘apps’, especially since the arrival of HTML5 seems to be via a browser now. There are still a couple of downloadable/installable/updateable ones I purchased back when dinosaurs roamed the earth but they are the exception rather than the rule (SuperDuper, VueScan et. al.) but increasingly, I’m logging in via a browser and transacting online: (Canva, Qucickbooks, banking, utility accounts, AI and others) And it goes without saying that if I don’t have a paid subscription, my days of YouTube Premium, Apple Music, Netflix, Apple TV (BritBox) and scores of others are doomed. 3. I am also witnessing the emergence of ‘App Killers’ … Canva by Atlassian being a good example. And although they also released a ‘Pro’ version and an app which I downloaded and installed as a Photoshop/InDesign/Animate/Acrobat killer (I’m talking about the free Affinity app by Canva) it focussed my mind on what I’m actually using apps for these days. Apart from saving $75 a month for the privilege of using any of the 75 Adobe apps included with the account. Web clients are happy with Wordpress and Joomla; graphics clients drool over the results by Canva; PDF clients couldn’t give a toss where their PDFs come from and the list goes on - all of these don’t require a single app download. 4. A short but significant point: the impacts of AI are changing the playing field again and I’m keeping an eye on this as ways to save time and money and increase client satisfaction. So where to for LiveCode in this environment? 1. A pricing model that requires a ‘per seat’ licence is the new normal. I am one of the ‘old’ brigade who has lived through 2 iterations of the LC ‘lifetime’ platform, only to discover that the last ‘lifetime’ model is end-of-life in 2027 So it seems that a transition to a ‘per seat’ licence is a bitter pill I will have to swallow. But the message to LC is say what you mean and mean what you say. 2. It must be harder and harder for LC to make a dollar these days, I have a vision that the office is now only 4 people (Panos, Heather, Robin and Kevin). If (and it’s a mighty big if) I transition to Create during 2026, I will have a long, hard look at what the EULA is at that point. In the meantime, I will continue to dabble with LC and its new companion AI and produce the tiny, anecdotal apps that amuse me. My latest venture is a small app called ScanDrive that loads a folder or volume and its sub folders and lists the individual files and exports them as CSV showing the path, the name, the size and the date created .. which I then import into a spreadsheet for sorting via any of these attributes. Yes, I know, it duplicates the Finder but it’s way faster and the results are keepable. I also have about 20 external hard drives I’ve gathered over the years. 3. Lastly, I suspect we haven’t seen the last iteration of the LC terms and conditions.I personally think their future includes using their platform to create apps and sell them in particular spaces eg. IMHO the world is screaming out for a Filemaker killer and a Quickbooks killer but that’s my selfish need writ large. Best wishes for the holiday season to you all! Ian Dalkin LC and HC, RunRev user since 2005 Ends Addendum: the marketing that attracted me to LC 20 years ago was the simple message “the English language - use it to write apps”. At the time they seemed to be targeting people who had an idea, more than like likely skilled in their field, who wanted to share it with the world (and perhaps make a dollar or two). Some recent contributions to the list about the EULA seem to illustrate this. But the sadness that underpins the whole discussion is that it’s like getting parts for my old 1966 MGB, increasingly hard if not impossible. So how will I be able to keep it on the road - translate that as ‘how will LC remain viable’? Maybe it’s time to buy a new car, possibly electric, but the old days are gone. The concept of buying ’seats’ is old news now across the whole internet, as are ‘calls to the mothership for licence checks’. A recent clarification email from Heather reads, in part: "No, if you are building an app that is for sale to or use by the general public, as opposed to an internal app used within a company, then you do not need a license for every end user. Instead, you sign up for an "apps for sale" agreement with us, and pay a small (5% or less) percentage of app proceeds to us. If your app is free, that percentage is obviously zero.” So in that sense it’s a similar (not identical) to the various App stores, Spotify etc. I wanted to finish this post with the cheesy epithet: “The king is dead, long live the king!” but I wouldn’t dare. _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
