Xojo question's new business model and IDE

I have referred a couple of colleague’s and associates to the Xojo website, they have downloaded the new IDE and I have had some feedback. Interestingly whilst they like the product/IDE they did point out the following.

Without a License and as a prospect

  1. They found it inconvenient that you would have to install and run a copy of the IDE varying platforms to compile/test and application. If you were targeting Linux for example and wanted to test your application on Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, CentOs, Madrake, Suse etc. - You would need the IDE on every OS platform.

  2. One also pointed out that he wishes to start up his own company and has a prospective customer looking for a bespoke cross platform software application. He would be reliant prior to committing financially to purchasing a Xojo license at least being able to offer a demonstrable working binary of his application to his prospective. Xojo prevents him from doing so. Almost every other development platform Visual Studio, Powerbasic, Delphi etc as a trial version allows for at least a basic binary build.

No, you can install the “Remote Debugger” on each of the target platforms to allow you to develop from a single platform, but run and test on others.

That’s right. If you want to distribute an app, you’ll need a build license, which is probably in your best interest if you are planning to bespoke/custom development.

Sorry Paul do not like this at all. With nearly all other software development tool trial products You can compile/Build on a trial before you buy basis. Early days yet but I think this will do more harm that good.

Can’t agree with you, Lee. You as a developer with a license can easily make a demo app. Why would your customer need to build? Why would you need to build just to evaluate Xojo? You want to build demo versions? That advertise your skills and business ideas? Isn’t that already applying Xojo to the problem at hand? How to convince customers to buy your software?

What you want is “let me build free demo apps for my business without paying for a license”. Well, you could use the old REALstudio for that. You could use it for 30 days (?) with a demo key. You would have a 5 min demo for free. Does this make your customers happy? Does this make a professional impression? I don’t think so.