Re: Re: Re: So, Netscape is dead?

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.";

Comment on Re: Re: Re: So, Netscape is dead?

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Re: Re: Re: Re: So, Netscape is dead? by Anonymous Monk on Jul 17, 2003 at 22:37 UTC
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.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: So, Netscape is dead? by sauoq (Abbot) on Jul 17, 2003 at 23:07 UTC
Don't underestimate the potential of a well-funded marketing department :) By marketing their version of Perl they would be inadvertently marketing the original as well. There's not a lot of point in marketing something you don't have an exclusive on. There are two ways to achieve that exclusivity. The "easy" way is legally. The hard way is through focused effort. By creating something that is prohibitively expensive to duplicate, you can win a defacto exclusivity. The "easy" way isn't possible with Perl and the community has already taken the hard way. Need I remind you that $40,000,000,000 is a lot more than $100,000? A company isn't going to throw 40 million or even 4 million (much less 40 billion) dollars into a project unless they can expect to make a considerable profit on it. For the other reasons I've already explained, the risk would be too high and the potential too low. Until your boss says "use it." Fortunately, I'm at the stage in my career where, if I can't outright dictate what technologies we'll use for something, I can exert a considerable influence¹. Frankly, I'm usually only told "no" when something costs too much... so, if perl were privatized, there would be a greater chance I'd be told not to use it. 1. So, my personal preferences actually do affect these things. :-) Still, my decisions are usually based on other factors like technical merit and business reasons. -sauoq "My two cents aren't worth a dime.";	[reply]


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