Terence Heaford wrote:
> Perhaps you need to differentiate which hat you are wearing at
> any particular point. :) (I wrote "our customers", as opposed
> to "RunRev's customers”)
I'll try to be even more explicit, but in general LiveCode's OS
percentages don't matter much to any of us, not even to them, for the
reasons I mentioned before WRT Linux.
LC is a multi-platform tool. Even if I develop my Windows apps on Mac
(as a majority here do), or most of my Mac and Windows apps on Linux, or
whatever mix is useful for any given developer, the only thing that
really matters is what platforms we can deploy to.
For example, depending on whose numbers you trust, Linux has between 1%
and 6% of the total desktop market (despite its dominance in nearly
every other segment, from servers to embedded systems to mobile), and
I'd guess the percentage of LC devs using desktop Linux is about the same.
But if RR dropped Linux, I'd drop LC without hesitation. Linux is just
too important for my work to not use it.
I know many Mac devs feel the same way about OS X.
Fortunately, so do the folks at RunRev. :)
Developer OS usage can only tell us what devs do, but not why.
> From a developers point of view, if only 11% of LiveCode developers
> are on Mac then the future viability of LiveCode for Mac may be
> threatened if it were to deteriorate further, that was my point.
True, but using their favorably disproportionate support for Linux as a
guide, I wouldn't begin to even think about that until a few years after
a platform completely disappears.
In Apple's case, it seems more likely that OS X would go away via a
merge with iOS than any catastrophic loss in overall market share.
And even then, as we see with RunRev and many other vendors, we can
expect to see platforms that may be abandoned my their maker still
supported by LiveCode long after.
OS X Snow Leopard is a good example: LC supports even one version
earlier, but Apple has apparently dropped even critical security updates
for that version, even though they're aware that nearly one out of four
of their customers is still using it.
Apple may feel they can afford to ignore 19% of their users, but
thankfully RunRev doesn't.
> Do we have any figures that confirm the LiveCode user base
> (developers) on a Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux basis?
I don't. We could ask Kevin, but since a lot of us switch platforms
almost daily and LC is now sold with one license that covers all
supported platforms, I'm not sure it would provide a clear picture of
actual usage patterns.
For example, I download and register most builds on OS X, Windows, and
Linux, but most of time actual time is split nearly 50/50 between Mac
and Linux, with Windows used mostly only for testing and usually in a
safely contained VM. But given the info RR has from my actions (the
download and the registration) it would appear to them as though I'm
using all three platforms equally.
And that's just on the development side. Mobile devices are run-only,
with their development happening on one of the three desktop platforms,
so almost nothing about their fastest-growing platform deployment
options can be known by them directly.
Complicating things further, there's no doubt a difference between OS
versions used by Commercial licensees and those used by Community
Edition devs. But even with those differences, both are very important
for growing the platform, each in their own way, so the key is to
maintain the core value proposition: cover as many platforms as
possible. At the end of the day, that's one of the primary reasons
people choose LC.
--
Richard Gaskin
LiveCode Community Manager
rich...@livecode.org
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