Preparing for Open Source
Our whole team is focused on just one goal at the moment - LiveCode Open Source

By Heather Laine

This is the first edition of revUp since the successful conclusion of our Kickstarter campaign, so I'd like to open by saying a huge Thank You to every one of you who contributed in any way, by pledging and/or spreading the word. Almost half a million pounds, or $750,000 dollars raised. That's what I call a Result.

Now that the dust has settled and the champagne has been drunk, what's going on at RunRev headquarters? I'm sure you're all interested to know where we are at and what the next move is going to be.

One thing I can tell you is that we are not sitting around counting the cash! I've never seen the team busier or more focused. We all feel very strongly that we have a responsiblity to the community to deliver what we promised, as close to schedule as we can.

Development Team
I checked in with the development team to see what they are doing to get ready for the first "as is" code release of LiveCode Open Source and here is what they told me they need to do.

• Factor out the script security features in the engine to allow both Commercial and Open-Source editions to use the same source-tree.
• Update and clean up the build-system to make it easy for anyone with the installed prerequisites to build the engine.
• Write up documents such as:
  - Coding standards
  - How to contribute
  - Public roadmap
• Update the licensing and activation system to support the new Commercial license types.
• Update processes to incorporate external contributions:
  - QA process with regards to Bugzilla
  - Release process and development cycles
• Prepare new artwork and splash screens for the Community and new Commercial edition.
• Audit the source-code - check and edit comments to help you understand what is going on

Quite a lot to complete by the end of March. Much progress in all these areas has already been made, and the development team remain optimistic that we can make that first release more or less on schedule, around the end of March.

Website and Server
Of course, changes to the product itself are not all that has to happen! We need to make changes to the website, the store, the pricing structure and the customer accounts system to handle the new licensing. Our website and server admin team are hard at work on this, making sure that our rather complex and very bespoke cms can handle the new requirements smoothly.

Kickstarter Fulfilment
While they hammer away at this (I've never seen Arnaud our Server Admin Guy look so intense!) the Kickstarter Rewards Fulfilment team are working away like crazy on getting everything lined up and ready to start fulfilment of the 40 different items promised as rewards for your pledges. This military operation involves no fewer than 8 members of the RunRev team, and is managed by the most amazing spreadsheet I personally have ever seen. This Master Document has now been populated with data from Kickstarter, merged with all custom pledges and new purchases from the store, and is ready to swing into operation next week with the first set of rewards (other than the forum badges which we did manage to start getting out last week). I'd like to offer a public thank you to JoJo Hernandez, for wrestling this spreadsheet into existance. It truly is a masterpiece.

So when can you expect your rewards? Obviously some will take longer than others. We expect to get the existing App and Game academies out to backers next week, together with the brand new SheepHerder academy. Commercial licenses should be getting into accounts after we have the first Open Source release, so that should be during April. Physically shipped items such as tshirts and Mobile phone sleeves are expected in May. The latest shipping items will be LiveCode Next Generation itself, which should arrive in the autumn, and the new Syntax Dictionary, which cannot be completed before LiveCode Next Generation.

Conference
And let's not forget we have RunRevLive.13 coming up in May! Preparations for this are also proceeding apace. See the article on our new Workshops format in this newsletter.

All in all, its a hive of activity here in Edinburgh, and we are all very excited at what the future holds, for RunRev and for LiveCode.