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On 11/2/2016 5:17 PM, Javier Guerra Giraldez wrote:

On 2 November 2016 at 07:21, Jeff Rouse <jeffr@activestate.com> wrote:

Your site says: "Why take risks with open source Lua and community
support".
I don't see any risks in open source Lua. What do you have in mind?


The risks for an enterprise is that they need to make sure of issues
like getting timely support, a contractual obligation for service,
assurances and timely security fixes. In many cases they need
the backing of a commercial entity to feel comfortable and in
some cases this is a legal or compliance requirement. To
them it takes risk away. So its important for us to speak to
that. It in no way reflects on how the community supports
the language.


Here's some feedback:

- most of the language in the site feels confrontational; offering
your distribution (and support) as an alternative, not a complement to
the community.
I hope folks here can give ActiveState some slack, they are not a huge entity like Red Hat stomping around, they need to promote and sell the thingy to make it a viable business. There are different considerations compared to, for example, someone like me contributing to Scintilla in my free time.
True, if successful, it will impact existing distributions. IMHO, as an old timer here I think we have too little resources to maintain a vibrant distro like Perl or Python do. Most folks just want binaries that work. If ActiveState is successful doing this, they would have put in time and effort, so, good for them. 


- among your solutions, you list "ActiveLua Community Edition",
"ActiveLua Business Edition", "ActiveLua Enterprise Edition".  When I
see these "editions" list, I always have to wonder what each of these
take away from the original and feel that the whole design is geared
to make the most money.  Nothing bad in having solid business model,
of course; but that means that if I choose to do any kind of
interaction with such a company, I have to be on the defensive side.
It's much more welcoming when you design your cost levels in terms of
support and not product.
Businesses will pay to minimize risk, or businesses can instead roll their own from an open source Lua distro. I think there is no risk of lock-in. IMHO there won't be a huge community depending on a single Lua distro vulnerable to lock-in; IoT/embedded platforms, Lua in apps, modding games with Lua, Lua distros, there is no big-fat-all-in-one. Say if you don't want ActivePerl, there is Strawberry Perl, or just use the perl in Cygwin. That said, if one is suspicious, try "activeperl rant" on Google, nothing there at all... 


- "ActiveLua™"  is it ok to include the Lua name within your new
trademaked name?  Not a lawyer (and trademark law is even more
confusing than patents and copyrights) but again, it feels like trying
to stomp on the community.
If "Lua" is not trademarked I don't see how this is like stomping. It's the US of A, a lawyers' paradise, companies need to do these things...
I am not trying to do cheerleading for ActiveState, just giving my 2 cents so that perhaps there will be a better balanced discussion going forward. 

--
Cheers,
Kein-Hong Man (esq.)
Selangor, Malaysia