Re: LuaForge is down and will be for some time

[Fernando P. García <fernando@...>]

Hello, I'm a peruvian Web Developer with some ideas, just my 2 cents:

This problem with LuaForge is the tip of the iceberg. But the crisis is an opportunity to impact so deeply in Lua's community. Why? luarocks!, this awesoness productivity tool to compile+install "rocks", we *really* need it to be RELIABLE, remark it. It is an start point to analize the real status of Lua's community in general.

PROBLEMS
- We lack of infrastructure to support Lua's community: LuaForge and Lua-users
- We are not showing the best face of Lua: simple, extensible, easy to learn
- We are not meeting frequently, nor phisically (we = community members)

- We are not doing *something* to make Lua's community as good as the software (we = those you would like to help, me included)
- Blah, Blah, Blah

Compare the look+feel of lua.org vs. lua-users.org, the last one is claiming for the help of a designer! Why? because it looks as *too* non-serious stuff, when it is so nice resource, just need to look as good as it is.
What about activity? It is nice to have one workshop a year, a cool mailing list and a friendly IRC channel, what's next?... *Local Events* people needs to meet each other more *frequendly*, People networks need the "I've *meet* him" factor. Those who do the hard/nice/cool/awesome work *should* be recognized.

OK, I don't want to do critisims all day and depress you, we can overcome problems, and be better!

SOLUTIONS

Short term plan
- LuaForge v1.1: read-only, patched, just-works, we are working in something better, version of the current one
- Brand new lua-users wiki, it's done in Perl?! I claim for something like: http://www.wikidot.com/learnmore:community is free(hosting, software, support!) and looks pretty
- Calendar(on-line whiteboard) of Lua events: Camps, Conferences, Workshops, Trainings, Meetups.

Middle term plan
- LuaForge v2.0: A HUB of Lua projects, hosted anywhere(trusted sites like: github, gitorious?, sourceforge, etc.)
- [someproject].luaforge.net ... do we really need it? please see http://drupal.org/project/og :)
- Home made LuaWiki, for showing the world that we eat our own dog food for useful stuff
- LuaConference/Summit, something big, to show the world the real size of community!
- Official(in the whole meaning of this term) Mailing lists: xxxx@lists.lua.org

GOOD NEWS
*We* can do it! you don't have to be a "the smartest hacker", just decide to help, now!

SUBSCRIBERS
Following persons support all or some of the ideas listed before:
(order is irrelevant)
1. Fernando Paredes García
2. You :)

DISCLAIMER
I'm just a beginner in Lua an her(right?) community, but I have the sense of a successful platform+community from Drupal (a CMS). 

Blessings!

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 1:34 AM, Jacques Chester <jacques@chester.id.au> wrote:

On 08/10/2009, at 2:23 PM, Fabio Mascarenhas wrote:

I just want to mention that moving Kepler to github was not a
renunciation of LuaForge, I think having a central index of Lua
libraries is very important, and I am not the only one that thinks
this can be done with a much simpler platform than Gforge. More
importantly, I think it can be done with a Lua-based platform,
probably something based on Sputnik.

For contrast-and-compare purposes, you may be interested to look
at how the Lisperati do it. The de facto packaging system for
Common Lisp is ASDF. I vaguely recall it finding download URLs
by looking at wiki pages, or something like that.

In any case it would be possible to embed "current download"
information in a wiki page with meta tags, or using plain
HTML with an agreed CSS 'microformat'.

Cheers,

JC.

-- 
Fernando P. García, http://www.develcuy.com
Developer - Analista de Sistemas
+51 1 9 8991 7871, Calle Santa Catalina Ancha #377, Cusco -Perú

** Antes de imprimir este mensaje piensa en tu compromiso con el medio ambiente, protegerlo depende de tí.