LiveCode Forums.

Almost two months ago, after attempting to complete the latest LC survey, and reaching the point were it was asking me to predict how many developer days I would need offered to me and how much I would pay for them or for the software in general, I wrote to LC Support the following:

This is pointless. Any value entered here does not really mean anything, it is an estimate based on a prediction, based on nothing more than the fact that you requested an answer so people needed to enter one. I am certain that 90% of the people that answered this part would give you different responses if they participated in the survey one week later.

Whatever it may be worth, a suggestion: don't make business decisions based on casual predictions for matters that people can't accurately estimate. I know you have a business to run, but you're asking for financial advice from an audience that can't give you a reliable answer. Follow your vision, add the FEATURES that people need most, and having done that, if you're not doing well financially, add a premium for access to these features.

Well it seems some of that matches the direction taken by LC ("add a premium for access to these features"), but some of it doesn't ("don't make business decisions based on casual predictions").

I believe the 2-year Indy offer that concluded on 24th July was mistimed. Too early.

IF this was done to achieve a cash injection (which is an absolutely valid and reasonable requirement), it was done wrongly:

- People new to LC would certainly not start off with a $500 commitment, so I'm sure not many takers came from there.
- People that needed Indy were already paying for it, so LC actually lost money on them.
- People that didn't need it up until now would not gain any advantage from fixed prices or discounts - they just don't need Indy.
- People could have been enticed by offering them more features. The "more features" part was mentioned in Kevin's letter (things that would be available only to Indy), but these features are not there yet. So this is another "forward-looking" argument. Not really a factor for deciding now.

That leaves only "support for LC as a platform" as a reason for acting on the offer. But strangely this was not the direction the campaign took. It was more "help our loyal customers save money longterm" rather than "help the platform stay alive". It would have been more direct, and in my view certainly more successful, to use the second argument. If LC is in trouble financially with regard to achieving the stated goals, they should just reach out to the community and say so, or at least offer flexible ways for us to help. Putting a $500 threshold to us providing that help is inflexible.

Needless to say, if LC is doing absolutely fine financially, and this was genuinely a goodwill offer to the LC community, all the above is invalid and I would be happy to hear it. But if that were the case, the offer would apply only to current LC users, not to everyone/anyone. Again, I would be glad to be wrong.

It worked for me. I'm in that transition zone between beginner and semi-pro so I went ahead and made the investment. I probably would have waited longer otherwise.

I'm happy to hear the 2-year Indy offer worked for some people, like you Matt. I really hoped it would work for me too, and for many others. I clicked on the purchase link more than once, but in the end I didn't go through with it.

After removal of the Membership option, which I purchased last year both as a way to support the platform and for my benefit, there seems to be no way shy of $500 to do that this year. I got quite a bit back for the $80 I had paid - Academies, 3-month commercial HTML (offered at the time), RunRevLive 14 Simulcast.

This year the only option I've got is to spend $500 for a two year Indy license (which I don't need yet), and which will EXPIRE in two years (I won't be able to use it at all after that). For developers making money from LC this may be perfectly fine, but I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that there is a large user base that is not being tapped, taking the risk asking them for $500 or nothing.

That's why I called the offer 'mistimed'. When a couple of Indy-only features were ready, or even when HMTL was out, then this would have made sense for more people. Right now, I suspect that the number of people like Matt, going semi-pro and justifying the purchase, are far fewer than the number of people wanting to jump-in or stay hobbyists, but still capable of spending $100 on a smaller package.

Anyway, LC HQ has all the facts and stats, they took a chance, and I really hope it succeeds.

I'm still occasionally clicking on the (overtimed) offer link. In case I manage to convince myself

Even just a non-expiring license policy might tip it.

Well, the problem is that people don't know that they can sell GPL software.
Read this: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en. ... AllowMoney
Fankly big companies prefers GPL software to buy, because if your company close, they will continue to work with the software.
However I don't see any problem in license price.
Indy price is just $ 54.90 per month.
You develop your software, when it's ready you buy the license (just $ 54) and deploy it.
If it's a great software, you can buy again the license just when you need to deploy a new version.
In my point of view it's very cheap.