So, I'm Wondering...

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overclockedmind
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So, I'm Wondering...

Post by overclockedmind »

I have the last version of LiveCode's "Community" IDE installed. I have been thinking about tinkering with some things, but are the projects, as built "marked" so 'they' can identify who created it, and what license terms they were under... along with all the other things you can think of?

This has had me waiting on OpenXTalk's AppImage to be released before I code anything. Except, well:

*Will OpenXTalk strip such information out / replace it upon importing projects?
*Will there be some sort of tool that strips that kind of information out?

It seems to me that the first and the second should both be "yes." But not knowing has me not coding, y'know?

Some clarification would be great.
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by richmond62 »

Well, I am not waiting, and have installed LC 9.6.3 on all the machines running Xubuntu in my school.

This is unfortunate, but it is reality.

I had very much hoped in July to have classes using a usable, cross-platform version of OpenXTalk.
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by overclockedmind »

richmond62 wrote: Sun Jun 19, 2022 7:36 am Well, I am not waiting, and have installed LC 9.6.3 on all the machines running Xubuntu in my school.

This is unfortunate, but it is reality.

I had very much hoped in July to have clases using a usable, cross-platform version of OpenXTalk.
Hopefully, this is something we will get determined. If I wind up taking a hex editor to any of my project files or their respective builds, and I learn something, I'll mention it here.
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

richmond62 wrote: Sun Jun 19, 2022 7:36 am Well, I am not waiting, and have installed LC 9.6.3 on all the machines running Xubuntu in my school.

This is unfortunate, but it is reality.

I had very much hoped in July to have classes using a usable, cross-platform version of OpenXTalk.
Well that's a shame, but it is the safe bet and since you have licenses you can get support from LC if something is broken.

Personally I wouldn't install OXT for anything too mission-critical. Unfortunately there's likely going to be bugs that I've introduced (on top of some pre-existing bugs). If you read the release notes 'over there' you'll occasionally see some reversions of previous changes. That's probably often because there's so many things in the IDE that are interdependent/interconnected, that sometimes you'll change one little thing and next thing you know the available handlers list isn't showing up in the script editor windows (true-story). Just like LC-Community, OXT makes no guarantees, not expressed nor implied.

At any rate... sorry, I did want to do release sooner, but lately it's been one thing after another... the sand filter in my pool was leaking sand so that's been a time-consuming disaster (I regret switching from a DE filter). Its also busy season at the 'day job' and every weekend is some birthday party or graduation celebration (niece graduates high-school next week) and so I just haven't had time to work on it much lately.
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

overclockedmind wrote: Sun Jun 19, 2022 5:00 am I have the last version of LiveCode's "Community" IDE installed. I have been thinking about tinkering with some things, but are the projects, as built "marked" so 'they' can identify who created it, and what license terms they were under... along with all the other things you can think of?

This has had me waiting on OpenXTalk's AppImage to be released before I code anything. Except, well:

*Will OpenXTalk strip such information out / replace it upon importing projects?
*Will there be some sort of tool that strips that kind of information out?

It seems to me that the first and the second should both be "yes." But not knowing has me not coding, y'know?

Some clarification would be great.
I'm not sure what you are asking here?
The LCC and OXT IDEs, as well as everything that I've been adding, are all GPLv3 or compatible (more permissive) licenses, they have to be. There's not much of anything that was stripped out from LCC for OXT, mostly unbranding ("the LiveCode IDE" becomes "the IDE"). All licenses remain intact. Extension packages have their own meta-data that should contain individual license information (but again to use something in OXT it must have a GPLv3 compatible license). I won't be making any tool for stripping out license/copyright info. The only grey area may be 'HyperCard' related things in there, fortunately Apple never sent lawyers after people doing HC clones since SuperCard circa 1989, and instead there were plans to standardize a specification for these 'xTalks (unfortunately that standard never really came to fruition).
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by overclockedmind »

OpenXTalkPaul wrote: Mon Jun 20, 2022 8:33 pm
overclockedmind wrote: Sun Jun 19, 2022 5:00 am I have the last version of LiveCode's "Community" IDE installed. I have been thinking about tinkering with some things, but are the projects, as built "marked" so 'they' can identify who created it, and what license terms they were under... along with all the other things you can think of?

This has had me waiting on OpenXTalk's AppImage to be released before I code anything. Except, well:

*Will OpenXTalk strip such information out / replace it upon importing projects?
*Will there be some sort of tool that strips that kind of information out?

It seems to me that the first and the second should both be "yes." But not knowing has me not coding, y'know?

Some clarification would be great.
I'm not sure what you are asking here?
The LCC and OXT IDEs, as well as everything that I've been adding, are all GPLv3 or compatible (more permissive) licenses, they have to be. There's not much of anything that was stripped out from LCC for OXT, mostly unbranding ("the LiveCode IDE" becomes "the IDE"). All licenses remain intact. Extension packages have their own meta-data that should contain individual license information (but again to use something in OXT it must have a GPLv3 compatible license). I won't be making any tool for stripping out license/copyright info. The only grey area may be 'HyperCard' related things in there, fortunately Apple never sent lawyers after people doing HC clones since SuperCard circa 1989, and instead there were plans to standardize a specification for these 'xTalks' instead (unfortunately that standard never really came to fruition).
I guess what I'm asking came from LiveCode's claim that oh sure, share it with your "team" and such, but don't be handing out or selling what you make. Really, it comes down to a bunch of lawyers in all likely-hood, but my understanding of the GPLv3 clashes with that, insomuch as: did they have our usernames or personally identifying information embedded in what got built?

They complained that part of the problem was people abusing Community, and not buying a subscription. This would imply that they knew how many people did that, or they were just running their faces. As far as I'm aware, Community being GPL as it contained GPL makes that a big wash.

At the end of the day, it's a big, lawyer-infested question I'm asking. I'm wondering if they could look at a Windows executable and narrow it down to "who" produced it.
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by overclockedmind »

At the end of the day, it's a question that doesn't probably have an answer, or need one. That's why I said "wondering."

I shall go on making the little widgets that make my life easier, whenever one comes to mind.
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by richmond62 »

As far as I can work out, you ARE allowed to SELL programs/stacks made with Open Source LiveCode,
BUT, should anyone request the source code you are obliged to let them have it.
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by richmond62 »

it is the safe bet and since you have licenses you can get support from LC if something is broken.
Well, err, Yes and No . . .

In spite of the fact that LiveCode have supplied me with licences for LC 9.6.x and 10.x for education
I will be teaching with 9.6.3 Community, for which they offer no support.

As I have never requested support either with licensed or open source versions in something like 22
years I am not going to start now: by the time I get any response any short course will have finished.

It is a safe bet for the simple reason that I have used 9.6.3 extensively on Linux and Macintosh and
am aware of any possible pitfalls: and, personally, the ONLY thing (for the future) that fusses me
about 9.6.3 is the lack of the capability to generate a Macintosh ARM native standalone package.
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by overclockedmind »

I think the "limitations" LC artificially placed upon Community Edition before/at their dropping of it, are my problem; and they had no right to make them. User "richmond62" seems to grasp my question, at least a bit. We agree on everything, in essence, and I think that might be part of what's confusing.

I apologize for the confusion. It's a complicated topic. I think "Community" was, as far as I know, GPL anyway, and so never "belonged" to anyone (or, belonged to the license, if that makes sense.) Them saying, "oh you can share what you make with your team, or your friends, but that is the hard limit" [I got a part of this info from an article about them dropping it, IIRC, and one of their graphics explaining their licensing structure.] That may have been just them trying to explain the GPL license to laymen. Plus I'm pretty sure Community was the "hook" that LC used to catch the commercial "fish," or sales.

Them saying those things, I guess, are my issue. They were, in their explanation, "bending" at the nicest, the GPL.

So maybe the whole thing is just a mind-game they played on me, that I need to let go of. In fact, I'm pretty sure it is.

I really actually hope to be using, and providing bug reports and whatever other small things I can do, here. My plan is, apparently, to continue using LC Community Edition and then transferring to OpenXTalk. You haven't done anything at all wrong; our question was whether to go straight to OpenXTalk, or transition from LiveCode Community to OpenXTalk. I am certainly not upset with you for your speed at anything; "life happens" might as well be my creedo.

Here it is, flat-out: if I comply with the GPL, am I not allowed to give away, or sell, what I create with anyone, or everyone using LiveCode Community Edition? Because regardless of their whining, the only answer I can see to the question is "yes."
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by overclockedmind »

richmond62 wrote: Tue Jun 21, 2022 6:54 am As far as I can work out, you ARE allowed to SELL programs/stacks made with Open Source LiveCode,
BUT, should anyone request the source code you are obliged to let them have it.
Man, am I a dipstick for having not seen it. Of course I didn't; it's the answer to my question!
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by overclockedmind »

Speaking of projects... (somewhat sad story ahead:)

My father taught me to play bass, and my brother to drum; we started in 1991. Three or so years later, we were on the road as a cover band. My father, who insisted in running sound, very often recorded the night onto a Tascam digital recorder, and then mastered out a tape. Every Friday and Saturday night, basically, for around ten years.

When my father passed, my Grandfather (wise man that he is) took all of the recordings my father had ever made, digitally or otherwise, and put them in his personal collection and never spoke of it (wisely, again.) When he passed, just recently, my uncle wound up with not only everything my Dad had, but everything my Grandfather also had (mostly VHS tapes and casettes, probably 90 percent analog, 10 percent digital. Guess who gets the job of digitizing *all* of it?

Side note: I thought when my Dad passed in December of 2017 that this black box of cassette tapes had been lost, or taken; and I remembered them being in my apartment in the same complex (apparently, not.) So for Father's Day, I got the gift of all of this stuff, but even more profoundly, that I hadn't lost it. I felt like I was walking on air for days.

It'll take more than days to finish this project off, though... I really need a quick way to determine if audio levels peaked out anywhere that I can adjust, without sitting through an entire transfer process (if they're blown out on the source, of course, they're just gone.) It's going to take days just to do *that* part.
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by overclockedmind »

Ever gotten the feeling you talked everyone out of the room? Sorry, everyone.
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by tperry2x »

So... sorry - I'm a bit lost, but essentially are you looking for a way to do a waveform spectrum analysis on an audio file within OpenXTalk, then somehow automate it with a looping script?
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by overclockedmind »

tperry2x wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 6:58 am So... sorry - I'm a bit lost, but essentially are you looking for a way to do a waveform spectrum analysis on an audio file within OpenXTalk, then somehow automate it with a looping script?
That's the way one might take it, I suppose. There were three topics:
1) The real license of LiveCode Community due to its GPL status
2) The return of several lifetimes worth of VHS and casette tapes to me -- I could use waveform analysis in their digitization, but I doubt there will be any scripting
3) Me missing what was right under my nose, regarding #1

I can delete the thread or something if need be so it doesn't continue to confuse.
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by richmond62 »

ever gotten the feeling you talked everyone out of the room? Sorry, everyone.
Well, like it or not: and neither you nor I should accept responsibility for this, but these forums have 'degenerated' to a 4-legged
conversation.

Obviously 99% of the people who used the Community version of LiveCode could not give a flying fudge about this project,
and seem, as characterised elsewhere, to have been fairly parasitic; not prepared to offer anything whatsoever.

Certainly, over 'on the other side', 95% of the Community users have bailed out like rats leaving a sinking ship: which is
both ludicrous and counter productive.

After all, the open source versions of LiveCode didn't suddenly stop working when my coach turned into a pumpkin!
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

Hey no problem, I just wasn't sure what the question was.

You can do whatever you like with LCC / OXT and anything you create with it, sell it or give it away, but it will inherently be licensed as GPLv3 or compatible license, and you therefore have to make your source files available.
LC Mark has repeatedly said they go by "the WordPress interpretation" of the GPL, in that anything that you make with it inherent the license.

As far as I can tell there's no person identifying info in stacks (certainly not in text scriptonly stacks) nor in the apps that you can build with it, unless you put it in there yourself. The only optional person identifying thing in the IDE that I'm aware of is the mechanism to create / use an LC account, which is used for LC forums and for uploading stacks to livecodeshare, which has been removed from OXT IDE (just the login / upload part of it). I plan to eventually replace that with some sort of combined stack browser/extension package manager, which seems like the direction they were going with that but then never finished it.

I don't think the folks at LC would track Community users without consent, so I don't know how they came up with their reasoning (or excuse) to kill it. Personally I think LC dropping the open-source because of this idea that they'd (allegedly) gotten into their heads that the FOSS edition was parasitic to their sales was flat-out wrong, a big mistake.
Here's why:
I only ever supported the open-source version by both working on GPL stuff and sharing, and with donations for stretch goals (I didn't know about LC until after the original KickStarter had already happened). When COVID hit I did the 'Stay At Home, Pay what you want" for the indy license, ONLY to try to HELP THEM FISCALLY! I've never published any commercial apps, I didn't need Monte's nice externals (I just wanted to check them out) or lessons or any of the other things they offer, but I figured I could throw them a few bucks and maybe help them through a COVID rough patch / downturn I was expecting. So then they counted that as a sale I guess, and when I didn't renew at the end of the year, I guess they then counted that as a LOSS of a sale TO the free edition, instead of what it really was, a donation to keep xTalk alive during COVID. So how many people did that too? What sort of analysis did they do? How many people were actually making money with LC and then switched to the open source version (and allowing their source code to be available)

Wave-form analysis is something I've looked at libraries for multimedia, and may eventually wrap some as extensions. I looked at a wave rendering thing, basically you pass sound samples (frame by frame) in and you get image data passed back. I'd like it if xTalk could be the "Live-Coding" multimedia artist's IDE of choice. That bit of niche area is currently served by Processing, Pd (PureData), OpenFrameworks, etc., but none have a nice and easy to read xTalk programming language.

I just found that someone did in fact get LCC 8.x (with Builder/Widgets) to build for ARM but they didn't release it publicly. I'm going to try to contact that person.

Also thanks to a community member I now have the "Pre-Builts" binaries that required for building the Engines. These are FOSS libraries that were available from LC's servers but are now behind a Password wall. I will make them available to anyone who wants to build from source to make their life easier. I intend to put them in 'the cloud' (GoogleDrive) as soon as I get a chance.

I would be interested in kicking in some cash to hire a pro to work on the engine source packages to make it easier to compile. We really only need to compile the main engine(s), the extras like Externals could be dropped, we have Extensions now! I do intend to eventually start working on the Engine(s).
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

Yes, as it is right now the Open-Source version should continue to work as long as there's Intel/AMD X86/X86_64 computers around (or Pi/ARM if you're OK with using 6 or 7.x (and possibly 8.x) which I just can't see going away in the next 10 years or so.
I can't worry about macOS AArch64 builds too much for now, at least until I have the hardware to test it on. Athough theoretically you can build ARM64 targets on Intel Macs running Catalina or better.
If someone really needs to run natively on AppleSilicon, one could purchase a subscription from LC Ltd and get access to an Apple compatible ARM64 xTalk engine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture_family

OpenXION is also an xTalk interpreter that runs on JAVA VM, so that works 'natively' (or close enough to it) on anything that has a JavaVM. Oracle already has a AppleSilicon/AArch64 Java available, in fact they started working on a (non-Apple) AArch64 build in 2014 (https://openjdk.org/jeps/237)
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by mdm »

[quote] Also thanks to a community member I now have the "Pre-Builts" binaries that required for building the Engines. These are FOSS libraries that were available from LC's servers but are now behind a Password wall. I will make them available to anyone who wants to build from source to make their life easier. I intend to put them in 'the cloud' (GoogleDrive) as soon as I get a chance.
[/quote]

Most productive move! Please do that asap.
Could you post the link then or send it in a PM to me (whatever you prefer)? Thanks.
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Re: So, I'm Wondering...

Post by richmond62 »

Athough theoretically you can build ARM64 targets on Intel Macs running Catalina or better.
I have built an ARM-MAC standalone with LC 9.6.8 RC 2 and had a friend of mine run it without any obvious hitches
on an M1 Mac: mind you, it was a bog-basic stack with a couple of fields and a button. 8-)
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