This is a wonderful link, thank you. I'm getting way more out of this question than I expected.

Unfortunately, as I indicated in other replies, at my work the steel ball of perl destiny has fallen through the pachinko machine of corporate IT obstacles to land in the APATHY slot.

If there is one thing I have learned when I was a programmer, it was that life is much easier when external dependencies are minimized. bellaire has a nice essay (found via your link), but I think the reasons given for why one doesn't want an external dependency is a false dichotomy. Here's a real reason: Support is a non-trivial concern with module/library use. All that happy hoo-ha about generality and testing becomes secondary when the module isn't there. If you can't think of at least three reasons why a module wouldn't be where you put it, then you either aren't sufficiently imaginative or your corporate IT isn't sufficiently stultifying.