I would like to tease that sentence apart a bit:I do feel disappointed by the scenario that seeks to attract open source support for a LiveCode fork in competition with and at the expense of the parent.
A "scenario that seeks to attract open source support for a LiveCode fork"
I honestly don't see anything wrong with this, either morally or legally.
Once LIveCode released an Open Source version 8-9 years ago, Pandora's box was open, and I cannot believe that
the good folks up in Edinburgh were unaware of the possible consequences.
I am absolutely sure an Open Source fork, in the short term at least, is likely to be an inferior product, and as such
is only likely to be taken up by the types of people who used the Community version of LiveCode and never sent a red cent,
one way or another, to LiveCode central.
IFF (and that's a big 'IFF') an Open Source fork does 'take flight', should LiveCode 'go under', it at least would prove useful
for any future work with xTalk (or whatever the language is called).
IFF an Open Source fork is in some way better than LiveCode, then it can act as competitive gadfly to put the
skates under LiveCode.
"in competition with"
Well, I am not a protectionist, a one-size-fits-all person, a monopolist or a socialist, and having seen in various
places what monopolies do (whether state or private) I think at least one fork might do "the scene" some good . . .
"at the expense of the parent"
Much the same as above: if a fork of LiveCode does turn out to be 'at the expense of the parent' then that says
something about 'the parent' which, from a Whiggish sort of viewpoint, is not very healthy.
Personally I deploy GIMP, Inkscape and LibreOffice across multiple computers running versions of macOS and Linux . . .
For three very, very simple reasons:
They do at least enough of what Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Microsoft Office can do for my needs,
they cost nothing, and none of those 3 work under Linux.
The fact that Adobe and Microsoft have not seen fit to develop their programs for Linux, nor made them sufficiently
better than their open source competitors (although they have had to drop their prices like nobody's business)
says more about them than the teams that put together the open source programs.
I am in an odd position myself as I have an extremely meagre income and LiveCode have very generously equipped me with educational
versions of the new LiveCode, and I will try to repay their generosity in a variety of ways.
But an open source version will also allow me to get a copy onto the computer of not only the children I teach summer classes to,
but absolutely everyone I meet who expresses interest . . . such as the EFL teachers I run into at EFL conferences who would
like to run up "baby grammar and vocab" standalones for the half-a-dozen manky-franky old PCs they have at the back of their
living-room-cum-classroom . . . and these are humble folk who wouldn't know a widget if it came knocking, let alone a
SWITCH statement.
IFF LiveCode keep on their toes, can pull themselves out of whatever slough they are currently in, and develop a "real shocker"
LiveCode 10, they have absolutely nothing to fuss about . . . and, if they don't "Hard Casein."
