I look at my Perl bookshelf and I notice one thing. I have very few O'Reilly Perl books. Object Oriented Perl, Extending and Embedding Perl, Higher Order Perl, and Effective Perl all have prominant spots on my bookshelf next to my old, trusty Web Techniques magazines. So, to say that O'Reilly has a monopoly over the Perl hive mind, to me, seems sadly uninformed.

I feel that the Perl community is very likely to have knowledgeble Perl authors who are accessible and part of the community. While they have prominant places in the community, few are set off on a pedistal. I can chat with many of these authors online or through email. I can have a drink with them at various events. I can even debate them on various mailing lists. The Perl community is full of many independent spirits, and many differing opinions, but very few factions common among many other open source communities. That's why, for me at least, its disheartening when people make anonymous, ad hominem attacks for no real reason.