Extension of systemVersion

[mwieder]

Well, this has gotten a bit derailed from the OP's original question. I'd suggest moving this discussion to the linux forum *except* for the fact that the OP is Richmond, so I guess it's up to him to take it wherever.

Building on what Richard just said,

1. Getting "the thing" to work on the vast majority of Linux varieties.

Working on a distro and being supported on a distro are two different things. LC does indeed work on many "unsupported" distros, but the ROI for actually supporting a wide matrix is pretty small, especially considering how small the revenue stream from the linux build probably is. In order to support a version you have to make sure that new additions and bug fixes work across all the builds, you have to deal with tech support issues, you have to test each build as it's built... I've done QA work before where we had to run through the gamut of tests across a couple of dozen combinations of browsers and operating systems, and it's a *lot* of work.

By limiting the distros that are officially supported (mine isn't one of them) LC as a company can commit to fully testing and declaring functionality across the most popular major distros, while also saying that other distros may well work, they just aren't part of the test matrix and if they don't work, they don't. I actually haven't come across any distros that wouldn't support LC, so I'd be interested in that list.

[richmond62]

By limiting the distros that are officially supported

The OP is entirely happy if this has gone OT.

Discursive discussions have always struck me as incredibly healthy.

Your argument does make some sort of sense [although it would be interesting to know
how Blender keeps its revenue stream going considering there is NO commercial version
of Blender], but the versions that LiveCode officially support could at least be up-to-date
ones.

[bogs]

As far as I know, there are 3 sources of income Blender uses, all voluntary, but here is what it says on the pages from Blender itself:

Donations and Sponsors

The Blender Foundation is an independent public-benefit corporation, to facilitate the open source Blender projects. Individuals or companies interested in supporting this financially can contact the foundation or visit the donations page.

We also run the Blender Store where all kinds of goodies are sold. The profits are used to cover Blender Foundation expenses and support Blender Institute projects.

Recently, they just had a 1.2 million dollar pledge/grant from Epic Games, in the past other companies have done other things. I think it was Pixar who donated a particular shading system to it. Largely these are happening because Blender is coming on par with packages that cost far more and do far less. As far as I can tell, it is the most complete 3d/2d package available at the moment.