Well, perhaps the only recourse you have is write a clear document why it's not a good idea to drop Perl. Start with organizing - find out who else thinks it's a bad idea to drop Perl - a counter document carries more weight if it's signed by a multitude of people. Make sure the document focusses on why it's bad for the company to drop Perl. Make sure you can back up your argument with facts - just saying that it takes the same amount of resources (== money!) to develop an equivalent program in Perl than a program in Java doesn't say much. If you have figures (which means, you got to do some research) to back up your claims, your arguments will be much stronger. Remember that your document has to be better than the one of the Java guy - he has already won a major battle.

Abigail