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in reply to So, Netscape is dead?
what stops a big corporation from acquiring/devouring Perl?
The Artistic License, the GPL, The Perl Foundation, and the community.
-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";
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Re: Re: So, Netscape is dead?
by Anonymous Monk on Jul 17, 2003 at 21:42 UTC
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Actually, no.
The GPL and Perl Foundation aren't going to stop anyone from 'Acquiring Perl.' The community can have a limited influence in that they can have a minor boycott of the new language (until their boss says use it, at which point they'll throw their stance out the window, like always). That leaves the artistic license. I don't want to be too critical, but a good license is hard to write. Loopholes can easily be displayed with enough lawyers (and when it comes to holes, the artistic license is to OSLs as swiss is to cheese :(.
So really, if $some_big_company wanted to make Perl its own, it probably wouldn't have much trouble doing so. This is very unlikely though. Perl (<= 5.x) isn't designed as a language major companies would use for large-scale development. In addition, they'd have resources to rewrite it themselves and make modifications as they see fit. Another point to consider is that Perl's an open source language, so they can use it already without charge, they only reason they'd have to acquire it is to sell it to others which wouldn't be a good business decision.
To conclude: they could, but they won't.
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The GPL and the Artistic License make it consistently possible for anyone to acquire perl. The issue is exclusivity. A company can't get exclusive rights to perl. They could conceivably make changes to it and call it theirs, but who would use it?
Maybe a lot of people if the company could add a lot of value to it... and that's where the community comes in¹. We don't just use perl... we make it better. We could have more than a "minor boycott" of the new language. We could boycott its use, maintenance, and development. There are few companies that could muster the resources that regularly go into developing perl, not to mention all the modules available on CPAN. And keep in mind also that there are many companies in the perl community. There are corporations both big and small with huge parts of their day to day operations that are dependent on perl².
The Perl Foundation (and YAS) is the least of the factors I mentioned, but it represents a non-profit corporation that is willing to support Perl's continuing development. I.e. unlike most open source initiatives, Perl has a money man. (Not one with real deep pockets, but it's a start.)
To conclude: they could try, but they wouldn't get far. And that's why they won't try.
Update: Added footnotes.
1. The community, in this case, is both the market and the competition. It would be crazy to try building market share under those conditions. ;-)
2. My point being that those companies would have a vested interest in preventing the privatization of perl
-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";
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but who would use it?
Well, I keep hearing around here that Perl is so superior to Java and many, many people use Java. Don't underestimate the potential of a well-funded marketing department :)
unlike most open source initiatives, Perl has a money man.
Who can't even adequately fund Perl's founder and a couple devoted core developers to work on Perl. Need I remind you that $40,000,000,000 is a lot more than $100,000?
We could boycott its use, maintenance, and development.
Until your boss says "use it." It's nice to think that your personal development preferences affect these things, but they don't.
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To conclude: they could, but they won't.
As far as I know $some_big_company has already poured lots of cash into the Perl5 project, and didnt try to steal it. The oneperl effort and GSAR's/ActiveState's work on Perl 5.6 was at least partially funded by $some_big_company.
So I think the evidence indicates you are totally correct that they won't.
---
demerphq
<Elian> And I do take a kind of perverse pleasure in having an OO assembly language...
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[d/l] |
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Update Well, I guess I shouldn't give out legal advice anymore... ; )
Some company couldn't sell Perl, the GPL prevents that. Unless Larry and everyone who has ever contributed to perl (the interpretor, etc.) agreed to release Perl under something other than the GPL, Perl is safe from being sold by companies.
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I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, blah blah blah.
First off, the GPL allows anyone to sell the work in question - they just have to provide the source and allow everyone else the same rights. I could sell you the linux kernel right now for $10000 (or any other amount) and I could still be in compliance with the license (I'll even give you a 10% discount if you buy within the next 10 minutes!).
Secondly, Perl is dual licensed, under both the GPL and the artistic license, right? So what does that mean? It means that I can choose which one I accept (I'm a little sketchy here, but that's my interpretation, corrections are most welcome). So for someone looking to 'acquire' Perl, the GPL is irrelevant. Like a windows machine on a network, the artistic license is a weaker point of attack.
But like I said, don't lose any sleep over it :)
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