OpenXTalk Forums

The stats are that companies that change their pricing 3-4 times a year do best

https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.p ... 5&start=75

1. I never knew that: I change my pricing every 2 years and have been running for 20 years: I can imagine what would happen if I changed my pricing 3-4 times a year (I'd be dead in the water in very short order).

2. It would be quite interesting to know where those statistics come from and what type of company they refer to.

Over 70% of businesses are using SaaS software these days, a percentage that grows every year

OK, I had to go and check 'SaaS':

Software as a service (SaaS) allows users to connect to and use cloud-based apps over the Internet. Common examples are email, calendaring, and office tools (such as Microsoft Office 365).

Dunno: I did a Q-&-D bit of research: i.e. contacted 50 businesses I know and found that 48 of them use LibreOffice, and 2 of them use google Docs.

Why am I naturally suspicious of people talking about statistics without actually referencing those statistics?

Probably because I have always worked in either an academic environment or on the edges of one: and know that any student/academic who produces "rabbits out of hats" is going to get in deep trouble very quickly indeed if they cannot support their pronouncements properly.

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I also am unclear about how moving one's development suite from a desktop basis to a web-browser basis (and it is not at all clear if in the latter everything happens 'in the cloud' or from software sitting on individuals' computers) makes something that was something that was not 'SaaS' into Software as a Service, or whether that is just a specious excuse to play "tiddley-poms" with pricing: moving from sales to rentals.

At the moment one of my sons has a mortgage on a property (which he pays off at exactly the same rate he'd pay rent on the same property) for the simple reason that paying rent is lost money: after 20 years of renting you end up with nothing, while after 20 years of paying a mortgage you end up with some property.

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Why have I started a thread called "Learning/Problems from across the way #6" ?

Because, like it or not, decisions made 'across the way' do and will have an effect on OpenXTalk.

I would argue that anyone who wishes to use xTalk and is not fussed about the fact that their end-product will end up as Open Source (remember you CAN charge money for Open Source software) would be better to donate $50 HERE to have a developer work on new engines (and specifically one to work on Mac ARM processors) than fritter the same sum away on 5-6 weeks rental elsewhere.

Ah:

Software as a service (or SaaS) is a way of delivering applications over the Internet—as a service. Instead of installing and maintaining software, you simply access it via the Internet, freeing yourself from complex software and hardware management.

https://www.salesforce.com/eu/saas/

Is that is what is going to happen 'across the way'?

richmond62 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 31, 2024 4:40 pm Ah:

Software as a service (or SaaS) is a way of delivering applications over the Internet—as a service. Instead of installing and maintaining software, you simply access it via the Internet, freeing yourself from complex software and hardware management.

https://www.salesforce.com/eu/saas/

Is that is what is going to happen 'across the way'?

Who are these companies doing SaaS? You mentioned Google Docs, but also MS Office 365, Adobe Creative Cloud Suite and a lot of others mainstream apps have gone subscription model and 'cloud'-centric, for about 10 years or so now. I can't comment on their sources for their statistics since they didn't cite any. LC already shifted to subscription/SaaS, that's not new.

It sure does seem like LC is going further in that cloud/web-technology-centric direction. The exception is that, when asked, they're are saying that there will still be a desktop app version available. Does that go away in 2027? I don't know.

It almost looks to me, based on screen shots, that the desktop version could actually be the web version running in a web-app-to-desktop-app wrapper of some kind. But again I don't know.

This just came up while discussing that situation last night... A cloud/web-tech based 'engine', with maybe a thin wrapper to make it run on the desktop, might not seem to make a whole lot of sense, since they've already had desktop engine(s), HOWEVER web assembly can achieve near-native speeds AND it can be used outside of a web browser, (Node.JS can do it). LC Ltd. would no longer need to maintain separate builds of engine versions for each platform because, WebASM being very platform agnostic, they could run the same wasm bytecode modules on every platform that has a modern browser engine. Most systems now come with some sort of "web-view" API built into the OS. Using that means the bulk of cost to support its 'Engine' would be shifted to the big players Apple, Google, Canonical, etc.

Cost and effort are the same reasons why I'm very interested in a web version of a full-blown xTalk IDE. Also, like most people these days, I'm often forced to operate within the security constraints of web sandboxing. That's just a fact of life in 2024.

I think it makes a lot of sense for them, their SaaS business model, and maybe the bulk of their remaining clientele, which I think tend to do things with databases, REST APIs, Charts, or other things that can generally be done in a web environment. With WASM there are many traditionally "desktop" C, C++ libraries can be or have already been ported (SDL for example) to run in web environments. In fact that helped make porting to Emscripten possible.

But if your development needs require bare-metal hardware, OS API, unfettered filesystem access, etc. this might not be for you. Again I don't really know. The devil is in the details and they haven't provided info on any of these finer points, they're rather vague and/or opaque about their plans and pricing so far.

They keep trying to get more blood from stones. Every time they make these dramatic changes it seems like more of their already comparatively small user base (I'd bet it's a 10th or less of the size of Xojo's users) runs out the door. I'm not sure how long they can keep that up.

Just read updates from the thread 'over there'.

I don't think the profit sharing app-selling model is terrible.

They posted some FAQs here so that might help:
https://future.livecode.com/which-license-do-i-need/

I'm probably biased since in recent years I have not used any xTalk in the work place (and not even AppleScript which I used to use a ton of) and so I do not care about corporate 'user seats'.

Obviously a commercial business must be flexible, adjust with the times if they're to stay afloat.

I think it's telling about the direction that Kevin used 'Appian' as an example of a SaaS dev tool, and compared to that instead of something like Xojo (BASIC). Appian doesn't have a desktop app engine and I'm guessing its mobile 'native' apps are thin wrappers around a web view.

If you think we're expensive, check out Appian at $75 per user per month, minimum 100 seats so starts at $7500 a month! They are doing extremely well.

I don't know that Appian is "doing extremely well", but that company has been around a few years longer than RR/LC team.
It looks like they peaked three years ago: Personally, on a cursory look I don't think Appian looks very impressive as a dev tool. It looks like an elaboarte WYSIWYG Web Page Editor running inside a browser (for something less elaborate take a look at Dan's non-xTalk thing here: https://hyperhello.com there's a desktop version too). I'm sure Appian includes bunches of cloud services back-end stuff too, but that doesn't interest me much.

Appian is clearly in a very different market.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian_Corporation

But kudos to cofounder Matt Calkins for being a champion board gamer, and for building a web app that helps track global support for Ukraine's defense.

Trying to parse some finer details:
https://future.livecode.com
Licensing plans seem a bit confusing, slightly too complicated.

Also the comparison between 'Create' no-code and 'Classic' yes-code is only concerned with the development time for a To-Do list (I'm pretty sure HyperCard came with a To-Do stack in 1987), that tells me very little about actual difference between the two other than one comes with some pre-written canned code (called 'Actions', which is same name Adobe has long used for that sort of thing).

Still not sure what the difference is between 'Create Native' and LC 'Classic' other than the later is being shelved with support for it completely ending in 2027.

This screenshot from my phone right off the bat does not inspire a lot of confidence in auto-magical responsive material design: What exactly is "Material design" anyhow?
Doesn't that just mean using Google's free Material graphics assets and css styles?

BTW. that SVG Browser stack, or rather the library that I developed along with it, includes the full set of those Material Icons that can optionally be loaded into memory, along with a few other sets.
One of those other sets is 'OXT IDE' that includes vector graphics I created myself which are inspired by HyperCard icons.

It sure does seem like LC is going further in that cloud/web-technology-centric direction. The exception is that, when asked, they're are saying that there will still be a desktop app version available.

I asked a direct question yesterday, and I notice that nobody has leapt to answer it:

Does that mean that licensers of CREATE will not have to have any software installed on their computers?

https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.p ... 5&start=75

The word that pops up in my head is 'cagey'.

If nothing else today, I learnt that these forums are being quite closely watched by . . .

As about 30 minutes after my 'cagey' post, the question was answered.

richmond62 wrote: ↑Thu Aug 01, 2024 7:27 am If nothing else today, I learnt that these forums are being quite closely watched

Yes, indeed.
That's fine by me, everyone is welcome - and the more the merrier
All I can take from all this is that we should carry on offering what we offer: with no changes / surprises about how you actually begin to run it.
As I mentioned in other posts, I think we should do what we do and let other people do what they want to do. It's not really important as far as I'm concerned.

FourthWorld wrote: ↑Wed Jul 31, 2024 10:33 pm Appian is clearly in a very different market.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian_Corporation

Maybe... for now?
But then on that Wiki page there's this:

As with other low-code platforms, it enables businesses to create apps and automations using little or no code.

Which does seems like what they're going for with Low-Code/No-Code in the Cloud.

kudos to cofounder Matt Calkins for being a champion board gamer, and for building a web app that helps track global support for Ukraine's defense.

That's cool.

OpenXTalkPaul wrote: ↑Fri Aug 02, 2024 2:41 pm

FourthWorld wrote: ↑Wed Jul 31, 2024 10:33 pm Appian is clearly in a very different market.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian_Corporation

Maybe... for now?
But then on that Wiki page there's this:

As with other low-code platforms, it enables businesses to create apps and automations using little or no code.

Which does seems like what they're going for with Low-Code/No-Code in the Cloud.

Yugos, Teslas, and Rolls Royces are all cars, but their customers are differentiated enough that they're not really competing for the same buyers.

Appian and LC were both founded about the same time, but Appian has giant piles of investor funding and currently grosses $545 million.

Many of Appian's customers are defense contractors and other similarly large businesses with very different needs from solopreneurs.

FourthWorld wrote: ↑Fri Aug 02, 2024 7:01 pm Yugos, Teslas, and Rolls Royces are all cars, but their customers are differentiated enough that they're not really competing for the same buyers.

If a Yugo gets delusions of grandeur it may think that it can become a Rolls Royce.