Hi Kevin,
Thank you very much for your response. It is an honor to receive a reply
from the founder of Livecode. I had indeed misunderstood the
non-commercial internal use licenses, so I appreciate the clarification.
Perhaps it might be helpful to address this on the future Livecode
website, as it may not be very clear to others as well.
The cost of the commercial license seems reasonable and in line with
what other manufacturers charge. As you mentioned, time is gold, and
being productive in developing an app or website significantly impacts a
company's costs. Over fifteen years ago, I decided to invest my time and
knowledge in Livecode because I consider it the best cross-platform tool
available. However, I was initially concerned when I thought each
employee had to pay $150 for using a small application in-house. I am
currently developing small applications and websites within the company,
such as an application for our IT department to easily encrypt and
decrypt folders.
I congratulate you and all Livecode team for continuing to lead Livecode
for more than 25 years. You have taken the baton from Hypercard and
elevated it to an incredible level.
Now that I know you read my messages, I would like take advantage :-)
and to suggest considering a new GPL version of Livecode Server Script.
Years ago, I replaced all my Python scripts with Livecode. I believe a
GPL version of Livecode Server would significantly boost the platform.
Best regards,
Heriberto
On 7/24/24 04:01, Kevin Miller via use-livecode wrote:
Hi Heriberto,
Thanks for taking the time to post.
If those 100 users are non-commercial users, i.e. not employees or
customers, then there isn't a charge. If you're building the app to
sell, its a different model. With that said, if those users are employed
by your company then it bears looking at the economics of this a little
more closely.
Firstly, there is the time it takes you to build the app. I'm assuming
you don't work for free, so this is a real cost. If we say that Flutter
takes only a few times as long to build the app, this cost quickly
mounts up. Any app that takes more than a week or two to build in Create
is going to pay for itself in the saving of your time when compared to
the new licensing costs. Then there is the ongoing cost to consider. Few
apps are created perfect, most require regular changes as they
encounter the real world. So you have the ongoing increase in
development costs for every update PLUS the lost productivity costs of
each of those users having to wait longer for each update, or ending up
with an app that simply doesn't do what they need. This happens all the
time. What's the wage bill for 100 employees? I have no idea what those
users do so this could be way out, but if they are earning say $50K a
year then that's $5M. You don't have to save very much time with a
better app delivered sooner to save the licensing cost here many times
over.
There is a reason we've invested tens of millions of dollars in our
platform: it's to make you more productive and let you get better apps
out faster. Saving development time is a direct development staff cost,
getting your app and revisions out faster saves costs across your entire
user base.
We'll be doing a more detailed comparison with Flutter in the coming
days which will help to better illustrate this comparison.
With all of that said we'd be happy to get on a call to talk about this
some more if it's helpful for either you or your boss. We can do that
now, or at any point before 2027.
Kind regards,
Kevin
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