>>Selena Sol said:
>>
>> I disagree. I would agree with Stas Bekman that the biggest
>> thing that can be done for Perl advocacy is to find a big
>> company to get behind it.
> Jason replied:
> I've heard this comment several times in recent years, but I've never
heard
> much reasoning behind it. There's clearly a difference of opinion in the
> open source community regarding whether Perl really does need a big
company
> behind it, or not.
>
> * What does it mean for a Big Company to "get behind" Perl?
It means that, as Stas has said, large companies are outwardly proud of
using Perl in their solutions. It means that CIO to CIO conversations over
golf involve 1) how much faster Perl took project X to delivery, 2) how much
easier it was to support, and 3) how cheap it was overall.
And it is not enough to get one or two big companies. We need a critical
mass.
But also, like I have said before, I think we, the Perl community, must
build enterprise components such as transaction engines, real-time queing
servers, business object repositories, and all the other swanky things that
are actually required in an enterprise solution.
If the Perl community wants to break into the enterprise market, we must be
taken seriously.
To some degree, this brings into question the whole basis of this line of
discussion. Is the next stage in perl advocacy to launch Petrl into he
enterprise market? Does perl 'need' to go there or is there some other
advocacy that community members should focus on. Though I personally would
like to break into the enterprise market with Perl, this may not be a shared
view.
I wonder if the perl community itself has a cultural disdain for the
enterprise market/world...enough that there is a culture clash? To some
degree, the very language itself may be built to resist the enterprise
market?
Other people in later posts to the original thread suggested that maybe
breaking in to the enterprise market (by doing thinmgs suc as bringing in
corporate sponsors) might run the risk of changing the perl community so
much that the best of the community would disappear and head off to a more
pure hackerland environment.
This is an important point to address and is a crossroads every
revolutionary core must deal with.
I guess my feeling is that evolution is important....I think some members of
the community will fade away but that other new ones will join in. I also
think that going mainstream will have some corrupting influences upon Perl
but that this is the natural way and is also good for the comunity and the
language.
> * What would be some potential benefits (to Perl, and to the company)?
I think the benefits to Perl are ones of market legitimacy. The benefits to
the company...welll....that is the hard question to answer. I don't see
many obvious benefits. If I did, I would have more specific suggestions for
perl advocacy. In the long run, I believe that Perl is a language that will
help busiesses do beter work...so by supporting Perl, they will help
themselves in the long run...but this is a pretty weak argument.
> * What signifies Big? Just how big does a company need to be?
Big is not measured in size but in market traction. The goals is legitimacy
so the company must be seen as a technology leader.
> * What kind of company would be appropriate for this role? Does it have
to
> be a technology company? Suggestions for specific companies that would
> be good candidates are welcome - include your reasoning why it would be
> such a good idea for that company.
I actually don't know. :) Certainly it would be cool if Microsoft or IBM
were to come out with perl products. Stas has suggested Intel....but I also
would like to see fortune 500s in the mix...the real engines of the economy
if you will. But this is a good question and I don't have an answer :)
> * What are some impediments that are preventing candidate companies from
> providing this support today?
I guess there is no reason to come forward...no business justification
excfept at best a long term and vague commitemnet towards building a
critical technology (if it is for them)
> I'm curious about this as well. I'm not actually familiar with any CIOs
> that use Perl or support it actively in their enterprises. If any readers
> of this list can identify specific individuals, I'd appreciate the
> reference.
> Feel free to mail me directly if you're uncomfortable broadcasting to the
> list.
Well, you can certainly contact our CTO, Gunther Birznieks...but eXtropia is
not a brand name example :)
