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Tim Kelly wrote:

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.  <snip>
First, my reply to the above. Then below, you can see my reply to his rather odd claims, which he has no basis to make.
Does insulting me somehow invalidate all the data points provided to you? The fact you have to resort to insults rather than accept or discuss the data provided says a lot.
Of course, this reaction could be because I described the "forced upgrade" business model as shoddy. Several people fell out of this thread in response to your comments about the business model description. I think you just described your business model badly, rather than accurately. 

>You have mischaracterized and distorted everything I have said.
Not at all. Based on what you say, assumptions have to be made. You on the other hand have been given, in various forms, the same answer by multiple people (the implication being, that if you want to you can ignore me and still get the same answer). You cast all the answers aside and insist on your "roadmap". If you do the maths for calculating the size of company required to have staff for a succesion plan and so on, you easily get to a mulit-million dollar company requirement (10 or 15 staff will do it at $100,000 year - which I think is about right for a good SW engineer in the US). 

>You have attempted to portray me as behind the concepts.
No. Its been quite clear that you are trying to get information for your managers or the people you report to. In my first reply to you I cited an excellent book that may help you educate these people as to why they don't need this data.
>You have claimed I ask for a multimillion dollar company behind Lua and for support for free.
Nope. But the things you ask for are typically provided by such organisations. And paid for. Given the way you are insisting on a roadmap otherwise the people you work for won't go for it, the only assumption I can reasonably make is that you do indeed need such a corporation, roadmaps and succession plans.
At the same time as this in one of your postings you pretty much insulted everyone here that is an employee by discounting their experience (because they are paid regardless and in your opinion take no risk). Myself a business owner, I decided we should port 4 of our software tools to support Lua, my opinion is also discounted. Seems that anyone not saying what you want to hear has their opinion discounted, even companies that make multi-million dollar bets on using Lua, their experience is discounted.
Interestingly, very few people have responded to you since then. Doubly interesting though, if you want succession plans, typically that requires paid staff, which implies employees. And of course, with all these things you get your roadmap (and the corporation, which almost certainly if it can afford to have succession plans is a multi-million dollar entity). Just do the maths, just 10 to 15 US/EU employess will make you a million dollar corp. But would you take the word of someone who is just an employee when they are writing the roadmap or do they need to be a business owner for it to be credible for you?
>A business that does not have a future plan can be questioned regarding long term viability, 

Is Lua a business?

>and past performance is not an indicator of future performance.
Indeed. And a roadmap doesn't help there in any case. You could have a roadmap and Lua 6.0 could be a pile of dog doo. Its unlikley, but it could happen (*). The roadmap won't help you, but as I posited in a previous posting it will give someone a nice warm fuzzy place to hide behind, shouting "it wasn't me, it was the roadmap!".
(*) If you think this can't happen, take a look at the Parrot VM and ask yourself why it is still not complete (Perl 6, which uses Parrot has been in development since June 23, 2002 according to their website). Maybe it'll be great when its complete, but the last entry was Feb 2006. Looks like not much progress then. 

>and past performance is not an indicator of future performance.
Extending the logic of the statement I've quoted above and combining it with your desire for a roadmap: Rather than accept the success stories of many users that Lua is very useful etc but in doing so have no roadmap would you prefer to have a roadmap but zero information on success using the language because "past performance is no indicator of future performance".
Why don't you address all the information provided to you, rather than insult me and ignore the information provided to you?
Lets start with Adobe and World of Warcraft. Why are you ignoring these two enormous market leading data points in two multi billion dollar markets? Just because you don't have a roadmap. That just is not credible. Do businesses really risk the sort of money they are risking on unproven technology?
I note in a different post Stefan Sandberg has indicated that Lua was used in rocket launches (albeit of a rocket that failed for unrelated reasons). I can also reveal that one of our customers uses Lua inside their satellites that are in orbit. So thats two space program related items that we know of. 

> I have had enough of fanatics and projects that tolerate them.
I'm not a fanatic at all. Fanatics champion a language, an OS, religion, whatever at all costs. I do not. I'll use whatever is appropriate for the task. Lua is suitable for some projects and not others. You appear unwilling to accept evidence that fits your criteria as evidence because you don't have your buzzword compliant roadmap.
Lua may or may not be appropriate for your project. Whether there is a roadmap or not is unlikely to be a deciding factor of any merit.
FYI: For most of the work my company does, Lua is not a suitable language. Like I said, use what works.
End of my reply to his private email to me (now made public). My reply bounced so Tim never received it.
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.
Then why refer to what business wants? Surely the only logical conclusion you can get from "A business that does not have a future plan can be questioned regarding long term viability" is that you think Lua is a business. If you don't think Lua is a business then why demand from Lua what you demand from a business?
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.

Why? We manage it. We are a small business.
Now that Asko attempted to revisit the issue, Stephen again stepped in and attempted to squash discussion. 

No. Only to give my point of view. Which anyone is free to accept of deny.
Read what Asko wrote, and read what I wrote, and then read how Stephen characterizes what I had said. 

See my reply above.
So why the extreme response from Stephen? It's simple - his company makes 
>lots of money providing support products for Lua.
Actually. We've lost money on Lua. I don't expect us to break even on Lua for years, and certainly not until we can support it on more than Windows (for which there are not that many users). 

>Any improvement within
>Lua's structure threatens his personal and professional interests. >Don't believe me?
Not at all. Every time there is stability it makes it easier for competitors to arrive. Every time there is change we have an opportunity for competitive advantage by providing tool support sooner. The exact opposite of what you state.
We make most of our revenue on our C++ tools. During 2008 I expect out (currently unreleased) .Net tools to do the same. 

The Lua tools won't be a major factor in anything.
http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2006-04/msg00488.html (Stephen 
>stating Software Verification wrote their own Lua parser)
Yes, we did. We had a need for a parser to identify statements (not compile them). Different job. Different requirements. If you are implying that we have Lua source code in our product you should retract that now.
We did find out some time later that there was a Lua method that would have given us the information we needed without us writing the parser. But it was about a year later, so we stuck with using the Parser.
He accuses me of wanting support without paying for it,
Sorry, that doesn't work. Here is what I actually wrote as a rider to any comments about you not wanting to pay.
"Should I be wrong about your unwillingness to pay for it, there are plenty of people here that will be willing, for a fee, to provide you with support. Just ask (I will not be one of them). " 

I clearly accepted the notion that you may wish to pay.

>His responses are completely disproportionate to my inquiries.
>He benefits from this by ensuring that Lua does not change,
Of course, along with every other Lua user. But if Lua changes we will happily upgrade our software to cope with it. As I have already indicated in a previous posting when we moved from Lua 5.0 to Lua 5.1.
which in fact I was never arguing for.
Sorry, you posted that you needed a roadmap because your customers want assurance of change. 


What's Software Verify's future plans for Lua, I wonder?


Keep supporting it. Evaluate if we can support it on other platforms.
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. 

It does appeal to business. See Adobe, Gaming, Space Program.

<snip some stuff that actually makes sense, about time>
If you think the response of this newsgroup or myself has been fanatical, I suggest you lookup the meaning of the word in a dicationary.
A fanatic is someone that won't change their ways no matter what comes along. Your need for a roadmap for your clients and refusal to accept all the other evidence put to you by all the posters to this thread matches that definition. That said, I do not think you are a fanatic.
I am not a fanatic of any sort. I prefer Ruby to Lua, but Ruby is not as flexible or useful in as many situations as Lua. I prefer C++ to all the others and like assembly. I don't two hoots about which OS you use or which musical instrument you play or which God you do or do not worship. 

If you can't respond without insults do not bother.

Stephen