Bus Factor

[Eleanor Bartle]

This is a macabre question. Apologies if it's not welcome here.

As I understand, the current Lua development team is three people, the same three who created the language to start. The results of a small team operating in lockstep speak for themselves, but no one is around forever.

Is there a succession plan? When one of you moves on, is there someone lined up to take your place? Is this something you're thinking about at this stage, or something you're confident enough you can figure out as it happens?

I'd hate to see de facto maintenance be opened up to the public, or worse, a big company. That's how you end up with the Python problem, and lose everything that makes Lua special. I hope none of us live to see that day.

No one likes to think about this kind of thing, but it has to be thought about at some stage.

[Sainan]

It's funny you titled this "bus factor" because it's not like the Lua development is a big secret, as all information and skills *are* shared, even with outsiders.

In the end, it's just gonna be a question of who's gonna put in the effort, and who's gonna win the "community consensus" as the successor, which does not seem like a problem that needs proactive planning.

-- Sainan

[Andrey Dobrovolsky]

Greetings!

I think Lua as a language is so close to the point of perfection, that
bus is too late,
Yes, in our corner of the Universe all software is rotating in the
endless and useless "new features" circle, but I guess Lua is from
another Universe ))

Best regards!
-- Andrew

нд, 24 трав. 2026 р. о 13:38 'Sainan' via lua-l <lu...@googlegroups.com> пише:

>
> It's funny you titled this "bus factor" because it's not like the Lua development is a big secret, as all information and skills *are* shared, even with outsiders.
>
> In the end, it's just gonna be a question of who's gonna put in the effort, and who's gonna win the "community consensus" as the successor, which does not seem like a problem that needs proactive planning.
>
> -- Sainan
>

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[The Future of Programming]

Hello

>> "I think Lua as a language is so close to the point of perfection, that"

You said what I was going to say, Lua is designed to be lightweight and have small number of features that are designed and implemented carefully. That's why Lua is very stable, flexible and fast enough for many use cases.

Such principles in design + portability + being open source are what's necessary for a programming language to stay for decades. 

Language with implementations that die (no longer used/active) suffer from problems that Lua already avoid

I was happy to know/use Lua before creating the Ring programming language and apply some of the lessons that I learned from Lua design in the Ring language

Introduction — Ring 1.26.0 documentation

In Ring community, I become satisfied that language could continue after me, once I watched many developers could understand/update Ring implementation

In Lua world, this is much easier and different implementations of the language (for better performance, or different goals) is a prove that this is a language that will continue and doesn't depend only on the original creator because they did the hardest parts right (lightweight & practical design).

Greetings,

Mahmoud