RunRev is launching an open source version of its LiveCode application development software. The finance was raised by a Kickstarter campaign earlier in the year.

LiveCode has achieved a certain amount of success as a paid-for product designed for cross-platform application design, but RunRev wanted more users, so raised $750,000 in a Kickstarter campaign.

LiveCode 6.0 is free to use for developers and can be used to create apps for mobile and desktop platforms. LiveCode’s advantage is that it aims to let you deploy your apps on a range of platforms using a single version. Operating systems covered include Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and Mac.

The LiveCode website describes the package as having “an intuitive graphical user interface and a unique English programming language”.

To give you an idea of what they mean, the following example should be fairly self evident:

Put word 3 to 6 of “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” into theVariable

There are sample videos of the software in action here at the RunRev website: http://www.runrev.com/products/livecode/livecode-in-video-/

but if you are only going to see one then make it:

The new version has been improved to give a faster performance to applications developed using LiveCode. This has been achieved through improved image handling and caching. There’s a new project browser that is the first step towards a new visual editor that should be included with the next full release of the software.

The annual RunRev conference will take place in May 2013, where the development team will show off the new release in workshops including programming for beginners, open source and app development, and coding solutions. You can download the open source version of the software form the LiveCode site.