Free, General Programming LabVIEW Edition

[powerofpi]

Idea:

Create a free, stripped down edition of LabVIEW for general purpose programming (GPP). Let's call this hypothetical edition "LabVIEW Lite". By GPP, I mean programming tasks that have nothing to do with data acquisition, test, or measurement- tasks such as creating generic PC, mobile, and web applications. Former text-based programmers would flock en mass to LabVIEW Lite for GPP use cases if a free, stripped down IDE were available. Imagine the recent popularity of the Eclipse IDE and Java, only with LabVIEW Lite and G!   

Rationale:

• LabVIEW Lite would exponentially promote the paradigm of graphical system design.
• Few (if any) structural dataflow languages are available for GPP.
• Structured dataflow languages are insanely cool! Inherent parallelism, increased productivity, and hierarchical system design are only a couple of reasons. These are things other GPP programming languages can't offer.
• 16, 32, 64, ... core consumer devices are coming! LabVIEW is poised to exploit parallelism in a way that is hopelessly messy with text-based languages.
• GPP use cases of LabVIEW Lite would spark user ideas for many non-GPP use cases, for which NI would receive full LabVIEW and NI hardware sales.

Implementation:

• No measurement/test/data acquisition VIs or tools.
• No FPGA tools.
• Application (exe, dll) builder for stripped down applications.
• The LabVIEW IDE we all know and love.
• Primitive types, clusters, structures, loops, file i/o, etc. provided.

I think it's a shame that programmers today aren't using G! What do you think?

[G-Money]

A lot of debate internally at NI happened before we declined Altenbach's Hobbyist License idea. In the end it was determined that we couldn't deliver on the idea in the near future so it was declined. We truly do understand that our users want a low cost version of LabVIEW for personal use and are looking at a number of different avenues to have this available.

I'm curious about why you would want a version with DAQ and Intrument Control stripped out of it. A lot of the fun things that I have done with LabVIEW in my personal life have involved DAQ and control of some kind. I agree that there is a growing number of people in the user base that are creating purely software based applications but historically LabVIEW is popular with DAQ and IC because we do it so well.

I agree that a LabVIEW Lite version would help with LabVIEW adoption and would love to see it available at ni.com. I am going to leave this idea open so the conversation can continue. I am curious to see if people would be interested in just a software based LabVIEW (no DAQ or IC) and to see the conversation deepen on how it could help with NI hardware sales.

[SteveChandler]

I don't think anybody wants DAQ and Instrument Control stripped out. But if that is what it takes to make NI comfortable with a low cost or free for non-commercial use version I would be ok with it. It would quickly convince people that they need to buy the full version so maybe it could help sales.

But maybe some other limitation would be better instead such as the number of VIs a project can have, number of nodes in a VI, etc.

[powerofpi]

"LabVIEW is popular with DAQ and IC because we do it so well."

Absolutely agree!

"I'm curious about why you would want a version with DAQ and Intrument Control stripped out of it."

Hobbyists, students, and home users would be interested in G purely for its productivity benefits, computer science coolness, and ease of parallelism. These people (myself included) would not (at least initially) care about DAQ and IC. I propose dropping DAQ/IC to differentiate LabVIEW from LabVIEW Lite; of course, NI would not want LabVIEW Lite to cannabalize LabVIEW. Therefore, it's important that the featureset of LabVIEW Lite be a limited subset of LabVIEW.

The benefits:

1) No need to debate the wording of the license- LabVIEW would simply have more capabilities than LabVIEW Lite, period.

2) LabVIEW Lite would require very little effort to develop, because LabVIEW already exists.

For these two reasons, I think what I am proposing is extremely feasible to deliver.

[powerofpi]

"But if that is what it takes to make NI comfortable with a low cost or free for non-commercial use version I would be ok with it."

Bingo, Steve. Right on the money!

[Darin.K]

The powers-that-be should (if they haven't already) look at Wolfram's Home Version of Mathematica.  I have it and love it.  Full-featured with very specific restrictions that it is not for commercial or academic work.  I think they did it about right.

I would probably think that the LV Lite version could be one version behind, but not necessary.  Full-featured is best, but I would add some protection that any code that is EVER saved in the Lite version can not be built into an application.  I'd probably even watermark the BD (not the FP as currently done for some versions).

[SteveChandler]

I would like to be able to build applications but I could definately live without that ability. Maybe something that could be done is that the professional version would refuse to load code that was ever saved using the Lite version.

[tst]

We're probably just repeating stuff here, because I'm sure all of these points have already been brought up before, but I would suggest that the hobbyist version should NOT have any missing features. It would mean more work for NI and it would just annoy people who try to use it (in the same way that not having the ability to edit event structures annoys some people who use LV Base or that not having diff annoys some users of LV Full). Similarly, it should definitely allow you to build executable and code which you write in it should be usable in normal LV.

The main differentiator should be the license which says you can't use it for commercial apps and to discourage commercial use I would add a clear splash screen as well as something visible in the menus. A water mark is an option, but I always found the water mark in the student edition extremely annoying. Maybe something less obtrusive or something which would only appear in some of the windows? Maybe something on the empty space of the toolbar?

[SteveChandler]

Maybe an annoyingly long splash screen that you can not turn off.

[tst]

> Maybe an annoyingly long splash screen that you can not turn off.

You mean exactly like LV already has today? 😉

[powerofpi]

If we're suggesting a fully-featured edition with only tweaked license terms, then we're back to Altenbach's idea which has already been thoroughly discussed and declined.

The "meat" of my idea is that LabVIEW is a top-tier software tool that could and *should* be competing with the likes of Eclipse, Visual Studio, Netbeans, etc. and their respective languages. I believe this is a competition that LabVIEW could win. Tight hardware integration features are only icing on the cake, and not necessary for a "Lite" edition.