If we want to distribute our patches to people who don't have a Max license, we can just send our patches and tell them to install Max anyway, so they can open the patch with Max Runtime or the demo license. If we, however, don't want them to be able to edit the patcher, we are going to build a Max collective. A Max collective may include many patchers, files, and folders. To run it, a valid Max installation is still necessary. Alternatively, we can just build a standalone application, which will not require Max or Max runtime to be installed. Since the processes of creating a standalone and a collective are very similar, we will concentrate on building an application. One factor we always have to be careful with is the operating system compatibility. A Max collective has the advantage of being platform-independent, as a patcher is. If we use any externals though, we need to make sure we include Mac and Windows versions to keep things compatible. On the other hand...