Hey Jonathan --
> > The source is key. The only thing better than Sun would be
> Microsoft. (I'd
> > love to read the internal memo which caused Microsoft to
> fund Active State!)
>
> Oh no, I meant how reliable are "web polls"? If your clients are
> intelligent they mayn't put much stock in your statistics and if they
> think the site has been nandored ("Perl can't possibly be that far
> ahead of Java!") they may totally discount them. Or worse, they may
> think that Perl sucks so bad that it *needs* someone to bias polls in
> its favor.
I would think Sun has little motivation to bias the polls in any way --
except to possibly exaggerate the JSP usage! Also, considering the Sun
developer site is arguably there to support JSP developers (not Perl
developers who have better resources), I thought the poll was even more
telling.
Add to that, that Sun has been the biggest victim of open-source software in
general! The latest Netcraft web server survey which just came out a few
days ago has the following to say regarding operating systems in use:
"Linux is the second most commonly used operating system. Linux has
been consistently gaining share since this survey started, but interestingly
not significantly to Windows detriment. Operating systems which have lost
share have been Solaris and other proprietary operating systems, and to a
small degree BSD."
Once you open the "Pandora's Box" of Open-Source (by using Perl, for
instance), dumping Sun in favor of Linux is the next logical step. Sun
knows this, and is arguably more motivated than Microsoft to minimize Perl.
(IMHO -- it's just a thought. :-)
TTYL,
-Jesse-
