Re: Lua Foundation?

[Russell Haley <russ.haley@...>]

On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 11:45 PM, Daurnimator <quae@daurnimator.com> wrote:
>  On 19 April 2017 at 02:53, Andrew Starks <andrew@starksfam.org> wrote:
>> Has something like the idea of a Lua Foundation ever come up?
>>
>> The reason that I ask is because there seem to be many opportunities to
>> explore, all of which require some kind of momentum to be formed or strict
>> adherence to Lua's specific mission. As a result, many efforts feels like
>> hearding cats or sounding like an unwanted extension to Lua itself.
>
> Such as?
>
> I'm curious what you think can be solved by a "Foundation" that can't
> be solved by us, the community.
>
> The main purpose for such a foundation might be as a legal entity and
> touch point for large organisations that don't know how to deal with
> individuals.
> It might be capable of
>   - applying for grants
>   - holding bank accounts for community funds
>   - being named as party to insurance (e.g. for conferences)
>   - being blessed by governments
> At the moment these are generally not done at all, by private parties,
> or sometimes via PUC-Rio and/or LabLua.
> I wouldn't be opposed to such an organisation, but I'm not entirely
> sure what problems you're solving for.
> I also have questions about where such a foundation should be
> founded/based to solve the legal issues it's designed to solve.
>
I think the FreeBSD Foundation serves as an excellent model for Lua.
FreeBSD is it's own entity. The FreeBSD Foundation is a separate
entity that manages the following sorts of things:
- collects donations for FreeBSD
- organizes community efforts and provides funding from donations
- provides advocacy such as special presentations at universities,
events and some publications (notably the FreeBSD Journal)
- provides resources for distribution (build servers, resources, bandwidth etc)
- helps direct and shape projects that the board recognizes as
valuable to the community

The board is made up of current and past commiters and other people
and has some full time staff.

A Lua foundation would be an excellent organization for providing
"with batteries" distributions and many of the other things people
feel the community isn't providing well enough.

On the flip side, companies like ActiveState can provide leadership in
the area of binaries and distribution if there really is any market
for it. But then again, where does a company go if they want to donate
resources to Lua? Is PUC-Rio capable of working with for profit
companies on that sort of thing? Maybe that is also where a Foundation
would help?

Russ