Re: Degenerative discussions (maybe he's right?)

[Tim Kelly <gtkelly@...>]

At this point I have to say something in my defense.  I had unsubscribed but needed to reference a couple of posts in offline emails and picked up on Stephen Kellet's continued distortions and now outright lies.

The email I sent to him and cc'd Roberto:

>FWIW: I have no personal axe to grind with you. You are not being
>attacked. Some of the concepts you present are.

If so, then you are quite the ass.  You have mischaracterized and distorted everything I
have said.  You have attempted to portray me as behind the concepts.  I am not. 
Everything I have presented has been asked of me directly during bid processes.  You have
claimed I ask for a multimillion dollar company behind Lua and for support for free.  I
have not.  I have asked Roberto to publically document future plans and structure.  That
is not unreasonable.  A business that does not have a future plan can be questioned
regarding long term viability, and past performance is not an indicator of future
performance.  Most other open source projects have clear documentation on these matters. 
I can answer all of the questions I presented with projects like PHP and Perl.  I had
hoped they could be answered easily with Lua and this matter would have become a
non-issue.  However, in your mischaracterization of my statements you have led the charge
in ensuring a fanaticism builds around Roberto.

I have had enough of fanatics and projects that tolerate them.

<end>

It has continued to bother me why Stephen has been so radically aggressive in his attempts to squash all discussion over issues I have brought up.  I have never implied Lua was a business.  It does, however, get used in the business world, and can learn something from structures and models implemented by successful businesses, including publically documenting future plans, people in place to ensure those future plans have a reasonable chance of success, and in the casoe of open source projects, a central code repository that is the _official_ code repository.  While there have been lots of examples given for companies that maintain their own version of Lua, this is unrealistic for a small business of five to ten people.

Now that Asko attempted to revisit the issue, Stephen again stepped in and attempted to squash discussion.  Read what Asko wrote, and read what I wrote, and then read how Stephen characterizes what I had said. Stephen distorts almost everything I said and passes his own judgements like a papal edict.

So why the extreme response from Stephen?  It's simple - his company makes lots of money providing support products for Lua.  Any improvement within Lua's structure threatens his personal and professional interests.  Don't believe me?

http://www.softwareverify.com/productsLua.html
http://www.softwareverify.com/prices.php
http://www.itsgui.co.uk/clientzone.html (Stephen is listed as Managing Director)
http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2006-10/msg00600.html (ridiculous "independent" product endorsement)
http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2006-04/msg00488.html (Stephen stating Software Verification wrote their own Lua parser)

He accuses me of wanting support without paying for it, but his company is in the business of providing support products for Lua.  By distorting my statements, Stephen has redirected discussion away from issues that threaten his structure.  His responses are completely disproportionate to my inquiries.  He benefits from this by ensuring that Lua does not change, which in fact I was never arguing for.  What's Software Verify's future plans for Lua, I wonder?

I completely accepted the argument that Lua's feature set was nearly complete and instead suggested that Lua focus on growth in a manner that would be appealing to business.  I stated that the lack of a roadmap could be inferred as stagnation, which leads to extinction.  It is rare that software products actually achieve the point Lua has - there is little need for improvement.  In business, when companies actually achieve their goals, large numbers of them enter periods of stagnation and then decline.  Why do you think Bill Gates used to always have an enemy he could point at, regardless of how stupid it looked when they had 92% of the market?

I have been ridiculed for presenting PHP and Perl as alternatives that don't have to face the same questions.  The reality is that long bookshelves filled with redundant literature make a lot of questions unnecessary, but Lua doesn't have that.  No public roadmap, no Lua consultant in every phone book, no central code repository, no problem?  Not hardly.

I never argued in favor of the recurring revenue model.  I hate it, and I rarely use the word "hate."  It is despicable, as in reality it is a "recurring cost" model from the client's perspective, and a lot of times I am a client to a company's product.  I have a long history of ensuring low TCO and high (+5 sometimes) ROI.  I do that by using components like Lua - reliable, rock solid, and correct.  I do have to compete against companies using the recurring revenue model, though.  I do have to answer clients' questions about long term plans, and I have had to study why some businesses succeed and other fail, even when their product was superior to the ones that succeed.  And I was saying Lua has some aspects that could be easily addressed that would help make the case for pitching Lua even easier.  Funny, even Stephen said that Roberto was the one most likely responsible for laying out a roadmap.

There's one aspect that isn't as easily addressed, though, and that's the Lua community's response to my arguments, even devil's advocate and sarcastic as they were.  Fanatical would be about how I would describe the response.  I've seen it before - I am a Mac user who argued against the Second Coming Of Jobs.  I see it every time someone utters an ill word towards OpenBSD.  Both have strong centralized leadership that the followers elevate to godhood.  It's getting real close to the time Roberto needs to distributing authority and leadership, if he wants to see Lua become a true long term project.  There are way too many examples of businesses and organizations that collapse after the departure of their central leader.  It's a really bad sign in any environment to have fanatical mobs willing to rise up at a moment's notice as the first hint of heresy.

The thread had over 50 emails when all Roberto had to do was post the short paragraph he finally did, a paragraph that should rightly have been in the FAQ as an offical position.  I know of no other word to describe this other than "stupid."  I _like_ Lua.  I had hoped to contribute to it.  

tim
--

"Anything war can do, peace can do better."  --  Desmond Tutu