Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/ LiveCode: Funding Open Source via Kickstarter Adam C. Engst Remember [1]HyperCard? We do, from the hazy depths of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and in fact, HyperCard played significant roles in our early Mac experiences. TidBITS started out life as a HyperCard stack, and not long after, Michael Cohen was working with HyperCard at Voyager, making the first Expanded Books. HyperCard was the lure that I used to convince Matt Neuburg to switch from his Apple IIc to the Mac. HyperCard disappeared from our hard disks long ago, but its legacy has lived on, first in the form of a cross-platform toolkit called MetaCard, which then morphed into Runtime Revolution and was later renamed to LiveCode. Now, through a [2]Kickstarter project, RunRev (the Scottish company maintaining LiveCode) is proposing to create a next-generation version of LiveCode and make it open source, so anyone can use it for free. (Besides LiveCode, several other HyperCard-inspired products have survived to modern days, including [3]HyperNext (free or $24.99 to build to Android), [4]HyperStudio ($89.95), and [5]SuperCard ($179 or $279).) An open source version of LiveCode could be important, and RunRev is hoping that if you agree, you'll support their Kickstarter project. For those who are old enough that their memories of those years are fading, and for those who are too young to run across HyperCard, it was an innovative programming tool created by Bill Atkinson and included for free with every Mac for some years. HyperCard combined database capabilities with a graphical user interface and the English-like programming language HyperTalk, which was much easier to learn for non-programmers than any previous language. HyperCard's ease-of-use and rich development environment caused it to be used in a wide variety of situations, from teaching programming to children to encapsulating the knowledge of experts who lacked the skills to program in traditional environments. HyperCard was used for popular games like Myst, influenced the creation of the World Wide Web, played a key role in the concept of wikis (from whence came Wikipedia), and inspired the developer of the JavaScript programming language. In short, even if you didn't use HyperCard when it was available, or came to the Mac too late to ever see it, HyperCard was a big deal. And since LiveCode can be used to develop apps that run on iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, an open source version could also be a big deal for bringing back the concept of programming for the rest us. So what is RunRev's goal with this Kickstarter project? As Kevin Miller, RunRev's CEO, explained it me, the company wants to release an open source version of LiveCode, but that's much more easily said than done, if the open source release is to be at all successful. The problem is that LiveCode is an [6]old, monolithic tangle of legacy code that dates back 20 years. It's also massive, with over 500,000 lines of C++ spread across six operating systems. Just dumping that code into a public version control system and telling programmers to have at it wouldn't work, since specific bits of code can't be separated from other bits of code, making it impossible for outside programmers to work on particular parts of the system. Along with modernizing and modularizing the code so other programmers can work on it, RunRev wants to make some major additions to LiveCode as well. Notably, the new [7]Open Language will enable developers to extend the LiveCode syntax to add new commands for independent extensions. And a new visual editor promises to help users develop interfaces that adhere to today's usability standards. Kee Nethery, CEO of the payment processing company Kagi and a long-time HyperCard fan, told me: I showed LiveCode to our local high school teacher and he was excited by the simplicity and the thought of all the stumbling blocks his students would not have to endure if they switched. Plus, being able to run apps on Linux, Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS, would mean that his students could build something and run it on their computers and show their efforts to family and friends. It really needs to be free for him to use it in his class. While that all sounds wonderfully positive, and I've gotten more requests from TidBITS readers for an article about this LiveCode Kickstarter project than anything else in recent times, this project has also engendered a lot of internal staff discussion, not all of it positive. The problem revolves largely around the amount of money RunRev is trying to raise to develop this next-generation, open source version of LiveCode. The Kickstarter project will fund only if the company's £350,000 goal is met. That's a lot of money ' about $534,000 U.S. dollars ' and it has prompted some to ask if it's a reasonable sum, if an open source version of LiveCode is worth that much, and if the money would basically end up being used to fund RunRev's payroll while they do the work they would probably be doing anyway. Some of these questions revolve around whether this is an appropriate use of Kickstarter to raise money from individuals, but we don't see that as an issue. Kickstarter vets every proposed project and accepts only those that meet its requirements. By definition, then, a project that appears on Kickstarter is appropriate for Kickstarter. And whether or not any given Kickstarter project is appropriate beyond that is determined purely by whether or not it funds. If it does, it was a good use of Kickstarter; if not, the project was flawed in some way. It's too early to say whether the open source version of LiveCode is appropriate in that sense; it has only 5 days to go, as I write this, and it's at £197,000, which is a large sum, but £153,000 off from the goal. It's impossible to know exactly what RunRev's motivations are in choosing to fund through Kickstarter, and if the £350,000 is a reasonable amount. I asked Kevin Miller what he'd do if the Kickstarter project failed to fund, and he told me that they'd look for other ways to accomplish the same goal, either through smaller campaigns or through private equity. In retrospect, working through Indiegogo, a Kickstarter competitor that offers an alternative to Kickstarter's all-or-nothing approach, might have been better, but on the other hand, if an Indiegogo campaign raised only £197,000 and that wasn't enough, it might have left RunRev in a sticky spot. Other concerns include the fact that LiveCode will be released under the GPL v3, and projects created using the open source version of LiveCode will also have to be released under the GPL. RunRev will continue to provide a commercial version of LiveCode for those who wish to create closed source commercial software, with prices ranging from $499 to $1,499 (there are also monthly and annual pay-as-you-go plans, along with a variety of educational discounts). This has prompted some to complain that it feels as though the Kickstarter project is just a way for RunRev to fund future development of a system they're already making money on. That's true, in some respects, but may be outweighed by the societal value of an open source development environment. In the end, you have to decide for yourself if an open source version of LiveCode is something you want to support. If it is, you should pop over to Kickstarter and help fund the campaign. There are a wide variety of reward tiers for different levels of contribution, and your credit card will be charged only if RunRev hits that £350,000 goal by 28 February 2013. If you do choose to support LiveCode, you won't be alone. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has backed the campaign, and ex-Apple CEO Mike Markkula has had input into the campaign strategy. Other well-known names among the nearly 1,300 backers so far reportedly include Bob 'Dr. Mac' LeVitus, science fiction author and general-purpose computing proponent Cory Doctorow, World Web Web co-developer Robert Cailliau, Kagi CEO Kee Nethery, cyberpunk author William Gibson, and a number of people familiar to me from TidBITS and TidBITS Talk. References 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard 2. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1755283828/open-source-edition-of-livecode 3. http://www.tigabyte.com/index_hn.htm 4. http://www.mackiev.com/hyperstudio/ 5. http://www.supercard.us/ 6. http://blog.runrev.com/blog/bid/266941/Taming-the-Monolith 7. http://blog.runrev.com/blog/bid/265511/Open-Language .