Re: The source file culture

[KHMan <keinhong@...>]

George Petsagourakis wrote:
> [snip]
> The lack of C knowledge is a severe hit to the common 
> Lua scripter, although the module authoring in its 
> entirety (only some few commentable efforts are excluded) 
> is ignoring the windows operating system and doesn't 
> release compiled binaries for the win32. 
>
> I would like to know why such culture exists.

In my case, I dump a lot of quirky stuff on LuaForge; supporting 
them is a time sink. Too many time sinks that have no benefit to 
me means they are a waste of time, or time and effort donated. So, 
I think preparing executables that support very few users is a 
waste of my time. Now, if we are talking about a major piece of 
work like a popular FLOSS editor, then that's a different story. 
We have to triage our time. That's why for Quylthulg I used a 
project name that I cannot even spell... :-)

Time and effort are very limited resources. Developer resources 
are very limited resources. There is always too little to go 
around in FLOSS projects. Most of us don't have a 
one-click-to-create-binaries-for-multiple-platforms set up. Most 
minor projects get nothing in return for all the hours and effort 
put in, no contributed code, no feedback. It's not like in LKML 
where they can afford to routinely diss people.

Now, if you were paying good money for the modules, I would agree 
that you should get good support. But hey, as I have said, it's 
mostly used as all free-as-in-beer, and if there are few users or 
few downloads, the case for preparing all sorts of executables in 
a reliable manner isn't very good. I don't even try because I 
don't want people to depend on me for those executables at all.

I agree with the other posting that those who want to use modules 
in executable form should look to the aggregators who package 
modules, such as Lua for Windows. Or rather, look at Perl, IIRC 
when a module gets into the main codebase, it gets supported by 
Perl itself. I think a mature platform will have to subsume 
codebases of most modules in this manner.

Yeah, to some users, it sucks, but I think we're making do to the 
best of our interests here. If this was a billion-dollar market, 
then of course, things would be different...

--
Cheers,
Kein-Hong Man (esq.)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia