Hi ElZitouni,
To answer your questions:
1. The latest community version was 9.6.3 and that has been taken up by an opensource developer who has kept it going. You can google for this.
2. No one knows the financials of the company (only they do) and it's not appropriate to discuss in an open forum - my impression is that they are not currently at risk, but who knows. There is always that opensource effort if the world caves in.
3. From your complaining about cost: As you obviously found out, other languages are much more work - that is why we use LiveCode.
But: There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
I was curious so I rechecked the pricing page - to my surprise things have changed (a bit) for the better. The starter plan is gone and seems to have been replaced with the student plan (aimed at students in higher eduction); you get 1 platform on purchase and if you prove you're a student you get all 7. The surprise now is that the standalones do not expire when the subscription lapses, making this a low-cost and feasible, if limited, alternative.
This means you have some options
1. For the cost of 3 Starbucks coffees/month: Use the student plan at £11/month (~ £132/year). For students in higher education (which sounds like may be your case) you can get access to all 7 platforms with this, otherwise it's limited to 1 platform. Standalones do not now expire when sub lapses.
2. Subscribe to standard edition - unfortunately the website is changed and not providing pricing for standard edition anymore - apparently you have to fill in a form which I can't be bothered to do. But what you say sounds about right, at least of the recent prices I had seen (about $400). It may be less now.
3. If you truly can't afford the price of 3 Starbucks coffees/month: Use the opensourced version of 9.6.3 - either the community version or the ongoing opensourced effort that is now under a slightly different name but runs in modern OS's I think .
General comments
Personally, I do not think it's reasonable to expect a software business to spend £££ to create an excellent product and expect them to absorb all the cost so you can have a free lunch - if all users insisted on this the company wouldn't be viable. They're not a charity, or a loss-leader for a massive corporation; they are a business and have employees to pay.
It is therefore a little bit ironic that in the same breath you
a) express concern that the company may go bankrupt and
b) complain that you cannot get their one product for free
This is the cognitive dissonance i find puzzling... but is not an uncommon sentiment here.
I can code in other languages - and to be clear, there are nice alternatives like Swift, but I don't have the time to build apps I need or for use in my department with these. Both learning curve and development time are vastly longer in any language compared to LiveCode.
So I'm more than happy to support a reasonably priced product, if it makes me productive
(my only issue is the definition of reasonable price)
The equation is simple:
If you don't want to waste your time by saving money then save your time by spending money.
Or I guess in LiveCode:Joking aside, only you alone can decide which is more valuable to you but pay in some way you will...
To answer your questions:
1. The latest community version was 9.6.3 and that has been taken up by an opensource developer who has kept it going. You can google for this.
2. No one knows the financials of the company (only they do) and it's not appropriate to discuss in an open forum - my impression is that they are not currently at risk, but who knows. There is always that opensource effort if the world caves in.
3. From your complaining about cost: As you obviously found out, other languages are much more work - that is why we use LiveCode.
But: There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
I was curious so I rechecked the pricing page - to my surprise things have changed (a bit) for the better. The starter plan is gone and seems to have been replaced with the student plan (aimed at students in higher eduction); you get 1 platform on purchase and if you prove you're a student you get all 7. The surprise now is that the standalones do not expire when the subscription lapses, making this a low-cost and feasible, if limited, alternative.
This means you have some options
1. For the cost of 3 Starbucks coffees/month: Use the student plan at £11/month (~ £132/year). For students in higher education (which sounds like may be your case) you can get access to all 7 platforms with this, otherwise it's limited to 1 platform. Standalones do not now expire when sub lapses.
2. Subscribe to standard edition - unfortunately the website is changed and not providing pricing for standard edition anymore - apparently you have to fill in a form which I can't be bothered to do. But what you say sounds about right, at least of the recent prices I had seen (about $400). It may be less now.
3. If you truly can't afford the price of 3 Starbucks coffees/month: Use the opensourced version of 9.6.3 - either the community version or the ongoing opensourced effort that is now under a slightly different name but runs in modern OS's I think .
General comments
Personally, I do not think it's reasonable to expect a software business to spend £££ to create an excellent product and expect them to absorb all the cost so you can have a free lunch - if all users insisted on this the company wouldn't be viable. They're not a charity, or a loss-leader for a massive corporation; they are a business and have employees to pay.
It is therefore a little bit ironic that in the same breath you
a) express concern that the company may go bankrupt and
b) complain that you cannot get their one product for free
This is the cognitive dissonance i find puzzling... but is not an uncommon sentiment here.
I can code in other languages - and to be clear, there are nice alternatives like Swift, but I don't have the time to build apps I need or for use in my department with these. Both learning curve and development time are vastly longer in any language compared to LiveCode.
So I'm more than happy to support a reasonably priced product, if it makes me productive
(my only issue is the definition of reasonable price)
The equation is simple:
If you don't want to waste your time by saving money then save your time by spending money.
Or I guess in LiveCode:
CODE:
if the cost of time > the cost of money then subscribeelse if the cost of money > the cost of time then if wantToStickWithXTalk = true then use community 9.6.3 or use opensourced product else learn a "free" language and pay in time end ifend ifStatistics: Posted by stam — Tue May 28, 2024 9:02 pm