I sort of get that but does this hypothetical system not have a c compiler? If it does, you can compile and install lua in probably under 5 seconds and actually have a sane language with respectable performance to target.

It also seems odd to me that a place that would be so rigid about installing a tiny language runtime would be ok with checking in the artifact of an experimental programming language.

On a machine where you can't easily install and maintain a runtime but you can install bash and amber and bc and sed?

No, because you don't need to install Amber, and bc and sed are pretty much guaranteed to be installed already if bash is.

GitBash (MinGW) doesn't ship with bc or dc, but it does ship with awk.

This is targeted at Linux and Mac. If you're using Windows you are in the lucky position of probably not having or needing Bash.

GitBash is a POSIX environment that includes the titular bash, and it doesn't include bc, which is a direct counterexample to your original assertion. Lots of people who are stuck on windows for one reason or another still want or need to use bash, and that's why they use GitBash!

Clearly, if Amber did not have a dependency upon bc, it could then potentially provide value to those users.