Andrew Simmons wrote:
>
> I've often thought that an answer to the problem of marketing Perl
> to would be a collaborative effort, funded by:
>
> (a) the usual suspects (O'Reilly, Activestate,..),
>
> (b) by appealing companies and organisations that have benfited
> from Perl, and, especially:
Great idea. Several companies have been mentioned on this list who
have benefited from Perl. How would you suggest appealing to them?
What form would their contribution take? If money, where would it
go? If not money, then what?
> (c) contributions from Perl developers.
This is trickier. From my observation of the Perl developers that
attending TPC, I didn't see a lot of folks with money to spend on
activities of this sort. Marketing on a true commercial scale is
extremely expensive - full page ads in industry periodicals, booths
at trade shows, and of course tschochkes (stuffed camels, anyone?) -
and collecting $50 from a couple of hundred folks doesn't stretch
too far.
I think your suggestion (b) is the key one. This is where you'll
find people with money to spend. The challenge is to figure out
how to persuade them to invest in marketing of open source technologies
like Perl.
-Jason
