I just released Lua Plugin v1.0 to the world. I struggled all day to get it ready. I wanted to add support for IO so that things like write() and read() would work. But without horrible hacks it will take a bit of work. The problem is that Lua uses standard IO to do its IO. In other words, it calls things like fputs() and fgets(). I kinda wish that it abstracted the IO model such that UNIX-style IO could just be one option. Then I could easily plug in my own IO handlers. But alas, it is not to be. So to do it right such that any Lua scripts will work correctly, I will need either to hack luaiolib.c, or, register my own IO functions on top of the existing functions. Either way, it is going to be a bit of work.
I also plan to release the source. I've never released the source to anything I've written. I always release free software, but not the source. The reason I release free software is because I can't imagine anybody would really want to pay for it and therefore the price becomes a barrier to use. Let's put it this way, there will be three kinds of people: (1) people who don't care and won't pay, (2) people who do care and still won't pay, and (3) people who do care and won't use it. So basically two-thirds of my potential customers are either going to use the product guiltily, or not use it at all. I don't want that. I want people to use it without worry. Also, I don't want to worry about support. If I take somebody's money, they have a reasonable expectation that I will support them. But I may get bored and stop working on the thing. I've done that a lot. I don't want them to come back to me and say "I paid you so you better support me." Making things free eliminates that problem.
5:46:48 PM #
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