perl.advocacy

perl.advocacy http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/ ... Copyright 1998-2013 perl.org Sun, 19 May 2013 19:42:32 +0000 ask@perl.org Fw: Funding & Feature Request Management For Open Source by Shlomi Fish Begin forwarded message: Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2013 02:33:42 -0500 From: James Clark <james.clark@cvalka.com> To: Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> Cc: Antuan Shakhin <antuan.shakhin@cvalka.com> Subject: Re: Funding & Feature Request Management For Open Source Hi Shlomi, So far everything has gone smoothly with developers adding projects and users making pledges. If the offer is still good we would like to take you up on forwarding the message (found below) about Catincan's beta launch to the mailing lists you're on. Thanks again, James ------------------ Just wanted to let you know that the beta of www.catincan.com - crowdfunding for *existing* open source projects, has launched. 2 Big Things: 1. All Catincan fees will be waived for the first 6 months for all projects. 2. The first 25 projects that have a new feature funded will have the 10% successful funding *fee waived for life*. If you know any developer that has an open source project and could use some funding, please pass this along so they can be one of the first 25 as well. Last, we just want to be clear that on Catincan, only developers on existing open source projects can put new features up for crowdfunding. Users can of course send you messages to request features, but developers remain 100% in control of their projects. We just want to help more open source projects grow and thrive. Thanks, James On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 10:25 PM, James Clark <james.clark@cvalka.com> wrote: > Hi Shlomi, > > Thank you for offering to do that! We're all set to go live tomorrow but > are still worried there might be some bugs and don't want to lose any > credibility. I hope your offer will still be good once we know everything > is working properly after this soft launch (hopefully just a few days or > so). > > Thanks again! > James > > On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 9:59 PM, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org>wrote: > >> Hi James, >> >> thanks for letting me know - what you described below sounds really good. >> If >> you want, I can spread the word by forwarding your E-mail to some mailing >> lists. >> >> Regards, >> >> Shlomi Fish >> >> On Tue, 5 Feb 2013 18:58:56 -0500 >> James Clark <james.clark@cvalka.com> wrote: >> >> > Hi Shlomi, >> > >> > You said you would definitely give a funding platform for open source >> > projects a try so wanted to let you know that we're launching the beta >> of >> > www.catincan.com - crowdfunding for *existing* open source projects, >> within >> > the next 24 hours. >> > >> > 2 Big Things: >> > 1. All Catincan fees will be waived for the first 6 months for all >> projects. >> > 2. The first 25 projects that have a new feature funded will have the >> > 10% successful funding *fee waived for life*. >> > >> > If you know any developer that has an open source project and could use >> > some funding, please pass this along so they can be one of the first 25 >> as >> > well. >> > >> > Lastly, we just want to be clear that on Catincan, only developers on >> > existing open source projects can put new features up for crowdfunding. >> > Users can of course send you messages to request features, but >> developers >> > remain 100% in control of their projects. We just want to help more open >> > source projects grow and thrive. >> > >> > Thanks, >> > James >> > >> > On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 7:18 AM, James Clark <james.clark@cvalka.com> >> wrote: >> > >> > > Hi Shlomi, >> > > >> > > >> > > Thanks for responding - it helps us understand what problems open >> source >> > > developers have to keep us on the right track. Our vision is to have >> open >> > > source developers in charge of their projects but encourage users to >> fund >> > > the features they need most. We will definitely keep you posted and >> hope >> > > that you will find the project useful. When it launches we will >> definitely >> > > let you know. >> > > >> > > Thanks, >> > > James >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > > ================================= >> > > >> > > >> > > Hi James, >> > > >> > > let me answer your questions as best as I can. >> > > >> > > On Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:38:17 -0700 (PDT) >> > > james.clark@catincan.com wrote: >> > > >> > > >> > > Hi, >> > > >> > > We are building a web based tool to help open source projects with >> > > feature requests & funding (www.catincan.com). We're hoping you might >> > > provide us with some insight by answering the 5 questions below. >> > > >> > > 1. Do you have a problem managing feature requests (time it >> > > takes/prioritizing)? >> > > >> > > I don&apos;t have such a problem. On the other hand, most of the >> projects >> > > I am managing are small-scale and don&apos;t take a lot of time to >> manage. >> > > >> > > Normally, feature requests are done using E-mail or using the issue >> > > tracker. >> > > >> > > >> > > Well, my projects don&apos;t require a lot of funding, but, >> naturally, it >> > > would have been preferable if I could make a living out of my >> open-source >> > > work. >> > > >> > > >> > > Well, I think a way for people to bid or offer money on feature >> requests >> > > (or bug fixes) for the projects would be appreciated. >> > > >> > > >> > > I would use it, yes. Or at least refer people to it on the home page. >> > > >> > > >> > > Well, with Freecell Solver ( http://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/ ), >> currently >> > > there is a problem that people run into problems understanding why >> > > composite multi-card moves are legal in the solution. This was solved >> > > to a large extent with a move expander, but there&apos;s now the >> issue of >> > > integrating it with the core solver. >> > > >> > > Other projects have different issues. >> > > >> > > >> > > OK. >> > > >> > > Regards, >> > > >> > > Shlomi Fish >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > > -- >> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- >> > > Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ >> > > Freecell Solver - http://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/ >> > > >> > > COBOL is the old Java. >> > > >> > > Please reply to list if it&apos;s a mailing list post - >> > > http://shlom.in/reply >> >> >> >> -- >> ----------------------------------------------------------------- >> Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ >> Perl Humour - http://perl-begin.org/humour/ >> >> <rindolf> If you repeat a scene 50k times, then the movie will have less >> entropy and will compress better. ( irc://irc.freenode.org/#perlcafe ) >> >> Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply. >> > > -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Rethinking CPAN - http://shlom.in/rethinking-cpan There is no IGLU Cabal! Home‐made Cabals eventually superseded the power and influence of the original IGLU Cabal, which was considered a cutting edge development at its time. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2676.html Sun, 17 Feb 2013 21:43:43 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Shlomi Fish Hi Dave, On Sat, 9 Feb 2013 15:43:43 -0600 (CST) Dave Rolsky <autarch@urth.org> wrote: > On Sat, 9 Feb 2013, Elaine Ashton wrote: > > > Shlomi you aren't the fruit of my loins nor are you, thankfully, the > > last person on earth. I can wait for the right person to give it to > > instead of the only person. If you have any more self-referencing quotes > > save them for someone else. > > So ... speaking of flame wars driving people in the community away, could > you (Elaine and Shlomi) please stop this one now. > sure, the previous message I sent is going to be the last one from me. I apologise if any one was offended by my opinionated posts, and I am sorry if anyone has any insurmountable problems with my personality and online behaviour (which I admit is far from being perfect). Thanks to all the people for their useful and insightful posts about the original thread and the sub-thread of encouraging females in the FOSS/free-content worlds. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ What Makes Software Apps High Quality - http://shlom.in/sw-quality Flock aims to be the browser for the social web, but I found it to be the completely anti-social browser. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2675.html Sun, 10 Feb 2013 07:27:28 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Shlomi Fish Hi Elaine, [risking top-posting] I need to deal with people with personality faults on a daily basis: on IRC, on IM, in real life, in E-mail, etc. I'm not always happy from their behaviour, but I try to deal with it intelligently and wisely. I don't blame all of Freenode's #perl faults on https://metacpan.org/author/MSTROUT or on https://metacpan.org/author/APEIRON or on thrig (= our channel master) or on Su-Shee or on popl or whoever, because while they have their faults, they still are essentially good people, and I try to find ways to overcome their issues as best as I can. Similarly, I admitted that I have the personality faults that you mentioned, but they are not insurmountable, and you can learn to cope with them instead of blaming everything that is wrong in this world on me (which seems incredibly silly and ridiculous when you think about it). In my entire time of contributing to the Perl and open-source/open-content community, I was able to make a lot of friends, and also was able turn some of my former enemies into either friends, or at least people who agree to collaborate with me and tolerate me. Would you agree to try to do the same? Here is an excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%E2%80%94 by Rudyard Kipling: <<<< If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: >>>> And here is what Marcus Aurelius wrote about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism : <<<< Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill... I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together... >>>> It's always the most effortless solution to expect the world to change according to your whims, but that usually won't happen and will only leave you feeling bitter and have wishful thinking and unreal fantasies, and will leave you as helpless as you are. In the long run, it is more constructive to handle problematic people and situations with tolerance, acceptance, rationality and some creative thinking. Regards, Shlomi Fish [SNIPPED] -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ My Public Domain Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/ Chuck Norris is the greatest man in history. He killed all the great men who could ever pose a competition. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2674.html Sun, 10 Feb 2013 06:47:16 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Dave Rolsky On Sat, 9 Feb 2013, Elaine Ashton wrote: > Shlomi you aren't the fruit of my loins nor are you, thankfully, the > last person on earth. I can wait for the right person to give it to > instead of the only person. If you have any more self-referencing quotes > save them for someone else. So ... speaking of flame wars driving people in the community away, could you (Elaine and Shlomi) please stop this one now. Thanks, -dave /*============================================================ http://VegGuide.org http://blog.urth.org Your guide to all that's veg House Absolute(ly Pointless) ============================================================*/ http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2673.html Sat, 09 Feb 2013 21:43:53 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Elaine Ashton Shlomi you aren't the fruit of my loins nor are you, thankfully, the last person on earth. I can wait for the right person to give it to instead of the only person. If you have any more self-referencing quotes save them for someone else. e. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2672.html Sat, 09 Feb 2013 08:40:56 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Shlomi Fish Hi Elaine, thanks for your message. See below for my response. On Fri, 08 Feb 2013 22:03:40 -0500 Elaine Ashton <eashton@mac.com> wrote: > On Feb 7, 2013, at 10:56 PM, Jacinta Richardson <jarich@perltraining.com.au> > wrote: > > > > There's another key difference that should be recognised, and the situation > > isn't that there is a dire shortage of women who know Perl (25-30% of Perl > > programmers out in business), there's a dire shortage of women involved in > > the Perl community. (between 2 and 6%) The tenacious women are learning > > Perl, they're just doing so for work. Not for fun. > > I'd say that the percentage is higher as women are very well represented in > system administration where perl remains a very common tool, but as plumbers > we aren't thought of until something breaks. I'm one of those crabby sorts > and I was pleasantly surprised by the perl folks at the first perl conference > since I had spent years lurking as a male persona on irc and usenet. I'll > admit the linguistic nerdery drew me in, but the whisky snobbery certainly > sealed the deal. I think the appeal of the perl community is the wide variety > of interests and the curiosity for more. The fun of the perl community isn't > with perl but with everything else. > > I will also say that I gave up on many things not because it wasn't fun but > because there are those who don't have basic social graces and who make the > thought of going to the dentist vs doing something for the perl community a > no-contest idea...at least the dentist offers painkillers and a smile. > > Since I'm on about telling the truth and trying to guilt the silent into > believing that silence is not a helpful act, I'll be direct about the history > that Shlomi asked me for ownership a few years ago and I refused because he's > even more self-promoting than Randal and I didn't want a Perl History > according to a megalomaniacal dude who filled the timeline with his own > milestones (Don't waste your time Shlomi). I admit I may be self-promoting and ego-maniacal and self-centred and lots of other stuff. However, I also care about the Perl community (and the global open source community in general, since I'm trying not to be a tribalist), and also agree that my own interests and those of the community at large align more often than not. For example, http://perl-begin.org/ was primarily my endeavour, which I have promoted and boasted of, but many people also found it a useful resource, and it proved of utility. The secret to deal with problematic people is not to go on a feud with them, and decide you want nothing to do with them, but rather to acknowledge whatever faults they have, and try to deal with them, despite that and make the best of the situation. See: http://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1747.html (= “the Stoic road to peace of mind”). I think many parents to children will testify that their children can be disobedient, or mischievious, or not do their homework or their chores on time, or whatever, but they still love them despite all that, and try to educate them in whatever way is possible. Perfection is in imperfection. > I'm aware that it has gone > unmantained, but it's my project and I'd like to hand it off to someone who > isn't going to use it as a way to jerk themselves off and those sorts with > spare time are hard to find. Even without updates, I'm glad I did the > timeline since even though the critics bitch that it hasn't been maintained, > they didn't write it and don't have the stories I do. :) even so. The episode > left me feeling again that no good deed goes unpunished which best describes > perl. My own other half has bitter memories of being pumpkin which is an > unfortunate, yet meaningful, tidbit. When even your most devoted think > they've not spent their time as well as they'd have hoped..... Seems like you are trying to protect the family's Jewels. I have the opposite view, in which I'd rather people build upon my work and take it in all directions, because people are more willing to read or contribute to something that is under CC-by, CC-by-sa, etc. or other permissive or copyleft licences, than to contribute to something that is under a much stricter licence, while people who are nefarious (e.g: spammers) won't care even if it's All-Rights-Reserved and proprietary. You may wish to read about the noble and highly moral teaching and deeds of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin (though the English Wikipedia article has become too detailed) for how to turn your enemies into friends, treat competitors with respect and avoid silly feuds and «an-eye-for-an-eye» and «may my soul die with philistines» bitterness. It is applicable for the software and digital media worlds today, as much as it applied to warfare back then. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Apple Inc. is Evil - http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/ When Chuck Norris uses git, he takes a coffee break after initiating every git commit. And then he waits for the commit to finish. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2671.html Sat, 09 Feb 2013 08:19:45 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Elaine Ashton On Feb 7, 2013, at 10:56 PM, Jacinta Richardson <jarich@perltraining.com.au> wrote: > > There's another key difference that should be recognised, and the situation isn't that there is a dire shortage of women who know Perl (25-30% of Perl programmers out in business), there's a dire shortage of women involved in the Perl community. (between 2 and 6%) The tenacious women are learning Perl, they're just doing so for work. Not for fun. I'd say that the percentage is higher as women are very well represented in system administration where perl remains a very common tool, but as plumbers we aren't thought of until something breaks. I'm one of those crabby sorts and I was pleasantly surprised by the perl folks at the first perl conference since I had spent years lurking as a male persona on irc and usenet. I'll admit the linguistic nerdery drew me in, but the whisky snobbery certainly sealed the deal. I think the appeal of the perl community is the wide variety of interests and the curiosity for more. The fun of the perl community isn't with perl but with everything else. I will also say that I gave up on many things not because it wasn't fun but because there are those who don't have basic social graces and who make the thought of going to the dentist vs doing something for the perl community a no-contest idea...at least the dentist offers painkillers and a smile. Since I'm on about telling the truth and trying to guilt the silent into believing that silence is not a helpful act, I'll be direct about the history that Shlomi asked me for ownership a few years ago and I refused because he's even more self-promoting than Randal and I didn't want a Perl History according to a megalomaniacal dude who filled the timeline with his own milestones (Don't waste your time Shlomi). I'm aware that it has gone unmantained, but it's my project and I'd like to hand it off to someone who isn't going to use it as a way to jerk themselves off and those sorts with spare time are hard to find. Even without updates, I'm glad I did the timeline since even though the critics bitch that it hasn't been maintained, they didn't write it and don't have the stories I do. :) even so. The episode left me feeling again that no good deed goes unpunished which best describes perl. My own other half has bitter memories of being pumpkin which is an unfortunate, yet meaningful, tidbit. When even your most devoted think they've not spent their time as well as they'd have hoped..... e. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2670.html Sat, 09 Feb 2013 03:03:53 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Jacinta Richardson On 07/02/13 13:49, Shlomi Fish wrote: > Before I answer your question, let me add that I think we should train > potential female (and male) contributors to not give up so easily after running > into a potential difficulty. I have no idea how you "train" potential contributors to not give up but you don't do it by being an arse. Studies show that boys are encouraged to keep trying, and girls are often told "oh, let me do it for you" from very, very young ages. That seems like training potential female contributors to give up and after a lifetime of that kind of training I don't see it as very surprising that some women are likely to stumble and give up rather than be tenacious. Sad, but not surprising. However, having said that, we're not held to what we learned as children. There are many professions which require tenacity, such as athletics, law, business management...; and so women can and do learn such skills. It's just worth understanding that some women are coming into learning such skills at a disadvantage to those men who were lucky enough to be taught them for the majority of their lives. There's another key difference that should be recognised, and the situation isn't that there is a dire shortage of women who know Perl (25-30% of Perl programmers out in business), there's a dire shortage of women involved in the Perl community. (between 2 and 6%) The tenacious women are learning Perl, they're just doing so for work. *Not for fun. * I suspect that when there are people who are approaching the Perl community in an attempt to try to learn to program, or who already know how to program and want to learn Perl, we have to *compete with other **fun**pursuits.* When the few bad apples in the community are allowed to behave badly towards them, that's not fun. *If learning Perl isn't **fun**, they won't stay.* Why would they? There are other, more fun things to do than be insulted, treated badly, harassed or otherwise in pursuit of something you thought could be cool. This is a problem for Perl and, in my opinion, for programming in general - *programming is not competing as well against **other fun pursuits*. It's also worth noting that when people flame others on mailing lists, or abuse others in IRC channels, active contributors also go away. You can lose up to 25% of your project just from one long flame-war. *People are in open source for fun*. Take the fun away, make it worse than work, and lots of them won't stay. It's easy to find entertainment on line these days that doesn't involve dealing with people who are being arses. Telling people that they have to have a thick skin, in order to have fun, will not work into the future. Knowing Perl or being a developer in a lot of open source is no longer enough of a hallowed destination that it's sufficient reward for weathering the abuse between newbie and achievement. Perl (and a lot of open source) needs new developers more than it needs developers with thick skins. *Getting a thick skin isn't fun.* It doesn't matter what you had to go through. > It's inevitable to face hardship and abuse, because even I, as a guy, faced > them, and still do, and have to know how to overcome them. Yes, men face abuse too. The abuse men face is rarely gendered. Women may face worse abuse if their gender is known than you likely have any idea about. Regardless, strangely enough, *abuse is not fun* regardless of your gender. Some people will stick through it, but I can't blame the people who don't. > I think trying to restructure a so-called-hostile community is like making the > mountain come to Muhammad. On the other hand, a single motivated person with > some amount of creative thinking, and who is not willing to give up can make a > world of a difference. *Hostile communities are not fun* for people who don't want to show off how much of an arse they can be. If we want people to come to learn Perl and participate in the Perl community, because *Perl is fun* (and as a language I really believe it is) then we need to make sure that*participating in the Perl community is fun*. Or at least we need to make sure that participating doesn't suck. Yes, individual motivated people can change things, they do all the time. People who stand against hostile behaviour and work to welcome and encourage all potential contributors are changing things. People who encourage involvement and shared decision making are changing things. People who make sure that their actions are*increasing the level of fun* rather than sucking it out, are changing things. > On Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:54:29 +1100 > Jacinta Richardson <jarich@perltraining.com.au> wrote: >> Feminists (and there are both male and female feminists) are not at >> fault for pointing out that lots of entrenched behaviour is not okay. >> It just isn't. Things like using soft porn in slides should be >> obviously not okay. But things like asking a woman who's turned up to >> your tech group if she's there because her boyfriend is, or who her >> boyfriend is, or even if she has a boyfriend, is also not okay. > Why not? While you shouldn't ask a woman if she has a boyfriend right at the > beginning of the conversation, it's not such a bad question to ask later on. Really? Do you have any idea how creepy it is to turn up to a gathering for the first time, as a woman, and have numerous guys try to work into the conversation a question on what your relationship status is? Can't you just assume that women are there for technical reasons and not to be hit on endlessly, because that's what asking a woman about her relationship status is, it's a precursor to hitting on her, not just polite conversation. Having that conversation every time I attend new technology gatherings (where I'm not previously known) is tedious and - guess what?! *It's not fun*. After she's been going a few times, and you've established a rapport - if you do, *maybe* you could ask her then, although if she wants you to know she'll probably have said. Safer questions: * How are you? * What got you interested into <technical topic>? * Is this your first time here? * Do you work with <technical topic>? * What do you do? * Have you been to any <similar technical groups>? * Have you heard about <upcoming conference>? * Would you be interested in giving a talk yourself at <technical group>? see, all of these are the same kinds of questions that you could ask a new man visiting. It's not that hard; if you wouldn't find it of dire important to know the sexuality and relationship status of a new person because they're a man, then forgo trying to find that out from a new person just because they're a woman. *Have fun!* Jacinta http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2669.html Fri, 08 Feb 2013 03:56:55 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by eashton On Feb 6, 2013, at 7:54 PM, Jacinta Richardson <jarich@perltraining.com.au> wrote: > > I don't think that Perl's decline in popularity is all that related to why Perl has too few women in its communities. Over time, my training classes have probably averaged 25-30% women (which is on-par with women's representation in IT in business). Skud's survey (years ago) suggested 6% women (which is 3 times higher than women's representation in open source for pleasure, although the survey may have been answered by people who only worked in open source for work). I think Perl has too few women in its communities for almost all the same reasons that too few women are involved in open source for pleasure, and they're well documented elsewhere. That is, this isn't a Perl problem, but a wider problem. All we can do is promote (haha) the strengths of our community and treat our newcomers well. I knew that anecdote would take this in the wrong direction, but I couldn't resist as it was a truly amusing moment and, at the same time, a revelation of human nature. You're right, it's not just a Perl problem, but we wouldn't be here 10+ years later talking about the same problems with the same people if the issue was solely a technical one. I think numbers, percentages, or the generally nice boys in the close community that we are familiar with (I did marry one...) may be misleading not only because there's plenty of words spent on the subject, probably more from men than women, but if we are leaving our own wishful thinking behind, a world where sexism is no longer an issue, a company like GoDaddy would be out of business overnight (for those outside of the US, see YouTube for GoDaddy commercials...QED). Words and documented lists of reasons why don't appear to be very effective. It's an issue, but that it's still an issue that gets the soft bokeh of a lovely leica 50mm lens in low light means there's a lot of other things that don't see the crisp light of midday. I spent a year in Switzerland which was like stepping into a German version of "Mad Men" set in the modern world without mid-century modern hipness, but with all the sexism still intact and overtly enforced. It was an interesting experience in how everything can look so similar as long as you don't challenge the status quo...and don't flush your toilet after 10pm or before 6am. :) So, to bring it back to what I was originally getting at...questions and words are only useful if the answers are more than just the lies we tell ourselves and others because it's what we and others want to hear. In the words of Dr. House, "Everybody lies." e. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2668.html Thu, 07 Feb 2013 02:58:31 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Shlomi Fish Hi Jacinta, we may be straying off-topic here. Before I answer your question, let me add that I think we should train potential female (and male) contributors to not give up so easily after running into a potential difficulty. In http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/ , Jennifer is suffering a lot of verbal abuse from Erisa at first (who is a girl no less), but doesn't give up and eventually is able to become a competent FOSS developer. Larry Lessig also talked about why he keeps on blogging here despite being really offended from bad comments here: http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/How_to_start_contributing_to_or_using_Open_Source_Software#Some_Mental_Preparation It's inevitable to face hardship and abuse, because even I, as a guy, faced them, and still do, and have to know how to overcome them. On the other hand, a female Dutch open-source developer (in her 50s or so - mother to several 20-years old, etc.) told me that she would give up much more easily on some of my non-sexist related problems I ran into and never try to contribute to that community again. I think trying to restructure a so-called-hostile community is like making the mountain come to Muhammad. On the other hand, a single motivated person with some amount of creative thinking, and who is not willing to give up can make a world of a difference. Samantha Smith ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith ) changed the fate of the cold war (for the better), by simply writing a letter (and she was a 10-years old child). It's now even easier to do that using the Internet. now on to what you said: On Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:54:29 +1100 Jacinta Richardson <jarich@perltraining.com.au> wrote: > On 06/02/13 14:55, Shlomi Fish wrote: > > I hope I won't get attacked for it too much (and I am an active > > contributor to advocacy@perl.org), but I think part of the problem is > > that Feminists (and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminazi -s - a term > > which no longer mean the same thing) are *never* happy from whatever > > behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female > > developers who wish to start, > > I realise this is derailing the thread further, but I'm going to object > to this. Shlomi, there are *many*, *many* men in the Perl community who > manage to get along with the women in the Perl community without any > gender-related problems at all. > > For starters, they don't insist on using "guruess" or "hackeress" after > being told that "guru" and "hacker" were not originally gendered and > don't need to be so (and I'm delighted to see that you've improved in > this area). Thanks! Anyway, some people may be tempted to use these terms because they are speakers of foreign languages which have gendered nouns, adjectives, etc. and it influences their thoughts, even in English. So you shouldn't jump the gun at them and accuse them of being sexist, because then you're adding oil to the fire. > They're also the ones who wouldn't even bring up the word > feminazi if trying to make your point, when it has never meant the same > thing and is and always has been a deliberate slur against feminism. > They're also the ones who don't jump to point the finger at feminists > for what is clearly a society-wide problem. > “Society-wide problems” can be changed by courageous individuals who instead of blaming their problems on the world at large, take simple yet clever actions (like those who play role-playing games know to take), and know better than to give up. > Feminists (and there are both male and female feminists) are not at > fault for pointing out that lots of entrenched behaviour is not okay. > It just isn't. Things like using soft porn in slides should be > obviously not okay. But things like asking a woman who's turned up to > your tech group if she's there because her boyfriend is, or who her > boyfriend is, or even if she has a boyfriend, is also not okay. Why not? While you shouldn't ask a woman if she has a boyfriend right at the beginning of the conversation, it's not such a bad question to ask later on. But after reading the "HOWTO encourage women in open source", I felt a lot of guilt from actually thinking about talking with the women who attended it, and now I realise it was baseless. > If > someone is correcting you on what you view to be relatively mild > transgressions perhaps it means that mostly you're doing okay. Or, > occasionally, perhaps it means you didn't understand that your > transgression isn't that mild. > > As a feminist, I can say with pride that (although not perfect) the Perl > community at large is my favourite group of tech people to hang out with > largely because it's the least sexist. Sure, I got asked what the > partners' program was like, less than an hour after my talk at YAPC::EU > and sure, I get challenged to prove my Perl credibility by people who > don't know who I am at YAPC::NA (a few times) but mostly this is a > really good crowd. I'm glad. :-). I also think that the Mageia Linux community, however small, has been woman friendly, and there are several prominent women active there on mailing lists, web forums, IRC, etc. > > So I don't agree at all that "part of the problem is that Feminists ... > are *never* happy from whatever behaviour the good-intentioned male > hackers exhibit towards female developers who wish to start," The Perl > community has many men who behave wonderfully towards women who wish to > start in Perl, and I (and I'm sure a lot of feminists) are delighted > with that. What do I mean about behaving "wonderfully"? I mean > treating them as you should treat any other starting developer: assume > competence, determine background, point out appropriate resources and > provide help when it is requested, and only that help, versus "here let > me finish it for you". My tangent about Feminists not being happy, was not related to the Perl community, just said as a stream-of-consciousness thing. Thing is many women will misinterpret men trying to help from whatever reason, as harmful, and criticise it or attack it, just like Terry Pratchett described http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rincewind as <<< Rincewind is one of those people who gets in the way of his own happiness. If it was raining kisses he'd be the only person with an umbrella. (CIX Pratchett Conference) >>> You should seize opportunities when you run into them instead of getting into useless paranoia about the motivation of the other party. > > I don't think that Perl's decline in popularity is all that related to > why Perl has too few women in its communities. Neither do I. > Over time, my training > classes have probably averaged 25-30% women (which is on-par with > women's representation in IT in business). Skud's survey (years ago) > suggested 6% women (which is 3 times higher than women's representation > in open source for pleasure, although the survey may have been answered > by people who only worked in open source for work). I think Perl has > too few women in its communities for almost all the same reasons that > too few women are involved in open source for pleasure, and they're well > documented elsewhere. That is, this isn't a Perl problem, but a wider > problem. All we can do is promote (haha) the strengths of our community > and treat our newcomers well. > > All the best, > > Jacinta > Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Stop Using MSIE - http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/ Chuck Norris is the ghost author of the entire Debian GNU/Linux distribution. And he wrote it in 24 hours, while taking snack breaks. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2667.html Thu, 07 Feb 2013 02:49:55 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Jacinta Richardson On 06/02/13 14:55, Shlomi Fish wrote: > I hope I won't get attacked for it too much (and I am an active > contributor to advocacy@perl.org), but I think part of the problem is > that Feminists (and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminazi -s - a term > which no longer mean the same thing) are *never* happy from whatever > behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female > developers who wish to start, I realise this is derailing the thread further, but I'm going to object to this. Shlomi, there are *many*, *many* men in the Perl community who manage to get along with the women in the Perl community without any gender-related problems at all. For starters, they don't insist on using "guruess" or "hackeress" after being told that "guru" and "hacker" were not originally gendered and don't need to be so (and I'm delighted to see that you've improved in this area). They're also the ones who wouldn't even bring up the word feminazi if trying to make your point, when it has never meant the same thing and is and always has been a deliberate slur against feminism. They're also the ones who don't jump to point the finger at feminists for what is clearly a society-wide problem. Feminists (and there are both male and female feminists) are not at fault for pointing out that lots of entrenched behaviour is not okay. It just isn't. Things like using soft porn in slides should be obviously not okay. But things like asking a woman who's turned up to your tech group if she's there because her boyfriend is, or who her boyfriend is, or even if she has a boyfriend, is also not okay. If someone is correcting you on what you view to be relatively mild transgressions perhaps it means that mostly you're doing okay. Or, occasionally, perhaps it means you didn't understand that your transgression isn't that mild. As a feminist, I can say with pride that (although not perfect) the Perl community at large is my favourite group of tech people to hang out with largely because it's the least sexist. Sure, I got asked what the partners' program was like, less than an hour after my talk at YAPC::EU and sure, I get challenged to prove my Perl credibility by people who don't know who I am at YAPC::NA (a few times) but mostly this is a really good crowd. So I don't agree at all that "part of the problem is that Feminists ... are *never* happy from whatever behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female developers who wish to start," The Perl community has many men who behave wonderfully towards women who wish to start in Perl, and I (and I'm sure a lot of feminists) are delighted with that. What do I mean about behaving "wonderfully"? I mean treating them as you should treat any other starting developer: assume competence, determine background, point out appropriate resources and provide help when it is requested, and only that help, versus "here let me finish it for you". I don't think that Perl's decline in popularity is all that related to why Perl has too few women in its communities. Over time, my training classes have probably averaged 25-30% women (which is on-par with women's representation in IT in business). Skud's survey (years ago) suggested 6% women (which is 3 times higher than women's representation in open source for pleasure, although the survey may have been answered by people who only worked in open source for work). I think Perl has too few women in its communities for almost all the same reasons that too few women are involved in open source for pleasure, and they're well documented elsewhere. That is, this isn't a Perl problem, but a wider problem. All we can do is promote (haha) the strengths of our community and treat our newcomers well. All the best, Jacinta http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2666.html Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:54:42 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by eashton On Feb 5, 2013, at 10:55 PM, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote: > > So I think it is better to encourage post-Feminist / post-Buffy / > post-Friends / etc. female hackers’ heroines. Trying to tout my own horn, here > is some ( hopefully ) entertaining and amusing post-Buffy / post-Feminist online > literature I've written: So self-promoting some sort of cringeworthy fantasy fem-hero fiction is somehow illuminating? You missed the point... What we want to believe and what is real are often two different things, just as the toddlers clung to what they believed was the right answer versus the actual right answer. These are the lies we tell ourselves much like the term 'meritocracy' is so highly touted, so firmly held as a virtue of open source and, yet, if closely examined isn't really quite true if we're being completely honest with ourselves. When Larry gave the YAPC keynote in STL in 2002 which was on the theme of more women in perl using Tolkien's pantheon of heroic women I cringed, not because I don't enjoy the genre, but because if anyone needs fewer fictional ideas about women it would be those in the audience nodding their heads. In order for change to occur, you're going to have to challenge what you believe to be are unassailable truths. e. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2665.html Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:51:27 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Shlomi Fish Hi e, On Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:30:03 -0500 eashton@mac.com wrote: > > On Feb 5, 2013, at 11:47 AM, Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org> wrote: > > > > Yes. Surprisingly familiar set of names, most I recognise from at least 10 > > years ago. > > > > Why aren't there new names? > > Likely the same reason(s) as 10 or more years ago. :) > > > (The breeding programme will take time to deliver results. Something needs > > to change in the meantime) > > Well, there have been a lot of words wasted on "Why aren't there more women > in $x?" for just as many years with just as little change and I do think the > correlation is meaningful if not causation. The breeding programme does > appear to be producing quite a few females so you'd think there'd be more > earnest investigation instead of believing the world will be miraculously > changed in a few years, but I'm not optimistic such will be the case. > I hope I won't get attacked for it too much (and I am an active contributor to advocacy@perl.org), but I think part of the problem is that Feminists (and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminazi -s - a term which no longer mean the same thing) are *never* happy from whatever behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female developers who wish to start, which causes them to do nothings towards them (as a worst of all possible solutions - see http://motivator-and-inspirator.blogspot.co.il/2010/07/grandfather-grandson-and-donkeys.html ), and make the ground fertile for constant abuse by the sexist “naked pics, plz” people. So I think it is better to encourage post-Feminist / post-Buffy / post-Friends / etc. female hackers’ heroines. Trying to tout my own horn, here is some ( hopefully ) entertaining and amusing post-Buffy / post-Feminist online literature I've written: * http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/ - the Human Hacking Field Guide - “An unlikely female computer hacker (= software enthusiast, not a computer intruder)-wannabe is getting taught by an even more unlikely female computer hacker. It takes place in Los Angeles, California and is written in English. ” * http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/ - a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode with some loose ends, which is featuring Katie Jacobson, a typical http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y female software hacker (originally from Berkeley, California, a Technion graduate and then working as a system administrator on a private merceneries star ship) who is excited (or sometimes agitated) to experience the various farfetched wonders my imaginary world crossing of Star Trek TNG/DS9, Buffy, Judaism, Objectivism and Neo-Objectivism, geek culture and many other lesser influences. Furthermore, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadzia_Dax and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kira_Nerys also play important rules there as does Deborah the Prophet. * https://github.com/shlomif/Selina-Mandrake ; http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Selina-Mandrake/ - “Selina Mandrake - The Slayer” - Selina is an unusual vampire slayer, who while being an Anglo-American student, with aspirations of becoming a Near East Archaelogist, testifies that: “I’m not into martial arts, and I’m really clumsy. As much as I like playing Basketball (and I do), I royally suck at it… ”. Despite all that, using the fact that she knows enough about the Near East, Judaism/Semitic culture, and popular culture, she is able of slaying all the demons she encounter, but while finding the entire process extremely emotional. ----------------- Regards, Shlomi Fish > An anecdote I'm fond of sharing since it still makes me laugh is when I > noticed a group of 4yo pre-schoolers playing with a European layer puzzle of > the human body (EU for anatomical realism) I asked them, "What is the largest > organ in the human body?" Without exception, the girls pointed to their head > or their hearts and the boys, well, the boys all pointed to the most > cherished of male body parts. I managed to not make ribald comments leading > to nightmares or corruption of such innocent souls and soldiered on informing > them that, no, the skin is the largest of the organs in the human body. Again > I asked the question and the girls, without exception, all pointed to their > skin and, the boys all pointed to their cherished member. Some things don't > change. :) > > If you want change, you have to do more than ask why and have a panel of > talking heads at a conference...or announce a new version of the language in > hopes that change can be driven merely by external novelty. > > e. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ The Case for File Swapping - http://shlom.in/file-swap The X in XSLT stands for eXtermination. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2664.html Wed, 06 Feb 2013 03:55:44 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by David H. Adler On Tue, Feb 05, 2013 at 02:30:03PM -0500, eashton@mac.com wrote: > > On Feb 5, 2013, at 11:47 AM, Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org> wrote: > > > > Yes. Surprisingly familiar set of names, most I recognise from at least 10 > > years ago. > > > > Why aren't there new names? > > Likely the same reason(s) as 10 or more years ago. :) > > > (The breeding programme will take time to deliver results. Something needs > > to change in the meantime) > > Well, there have been a lot of words wasted on "Why aren't there more > women in $x?" for just as many years with just as little change and I > do think the correlation is meaningful if not causation. The breeding > programme does appear to be producing quite a few females so you'd > think there'd be more earnest investigation instead of believing the > world will be miraculously changed in a few years, but I'm not > optimistic such will be the case. I was going to make some kind of actually relevant contribution, but as I am ill, it would probably come out all wrong. I'll try to remember to say something later if this doesn't kill me. dha -- David H. Adler - <dha@panix.com> - http://www.panix.com/~dha/ Perl gives you enough rope to hang yourself and your neighbor. - Randal L. Schwartz http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2663.html Tue, 05 Feb 2013 23:59:01 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by eashton On Feb 5, 2013, at 11:47 AM, Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org> wrote: > > Yes. Surprisingly familiar set of names, most I recognise from at least 10 > years ago. > > Why aren't there new names? Likely the same reason(s) as 10 or more years ago. :) > (The breeding programme will take time to deliver results. Something needs > to change in the meantime) Well, there have been a lot of words wasted on "Why aren't there more women in $x?" for just as many years with just as little change and I do think the correlation is meaningful if not causation. The breeding programme does appear to be producing quite a few females so you'd think there'd be more earnest investigation instead of believing the world will be miraculously changed in a few years, but I'm not optimistic such will be the case. An anecdote I'm fond of sharing since it still makes me laugh is when I noticed a group of 4yo pre-schoolers playing with a European layer puzzle of the human body (EU for anatomical realism) I asked them, "What is the largest organ in the human body?" Without exception, the girls pointed to their head or their hearts and the boys, well, the boys all pointed to the most cherished of male body parts. I managed to not make ribald comments leading to nightmares or corruption of such innocent souls and soldiered on informing them that, no, the skin is the largest of the organs in the human body. Again I asked the question and the girls, without exception, all pointed to their skin and, the boys all pointed to their cherished member. Some things don't change. :) If you want change, you have to do more than ask why and have a panel of talking heads at a conference...or announce a new version of the language in hopes that change can be driven merely by external novelty. e. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2662.html Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:30:19 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Nicholas Clark On Sun, Feb 03, 2013 at 10:35:38AM -0500, eashton@mac.com wrote: > > On Feb 2, 2013, at 11:12 PM, Peter Scott <Peter@PSDT.com> wrote: > > > > This is, basically, Jon Orwant's prophecy coming home to roost: "People > > are going to move on and do something else." If Perl 6 was ready for > > prime time, it would be a different story. > > Jon and I had the same thought, but he for the more technical aspect and I for the more social aspect. That P6 isn't ready yet, even after so many years, isn't really wholly to blame for the lack of vigor in numbers of users. That we are the same people having the same conversation 15 years on might have more to do with it than anything. Yes. Surprisingly familiar set of names, most I recognise from at least 10 years ago. Why aren't there new names? (The breeding programme will take time to deliver results. Something needs to change in the meantime) Nicholas Clark http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2661.html Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:47:55 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Nicholas Clark On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 06:39:14PM +0100, Richard Foley wrote: > s/warn/warm/ # ? Yes, > On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 05:01:21PM +0000, Nicholas Clark wrote: > > More warn bodies! Although really, I think that zombies have a better plan for what is needed. :-) Nicholas Clark http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2660.html Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:37:46 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Shlomi Fish Hi Georgios, On Sun, 03 Feb 2013 22:51:28 +0100 Georgios Magklaras <georgios@biotek.uio.no> wrote: > On 31/01/13 09:10, Johan Vromans wrote: > > http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere > > > > We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do > > about it? > > > > -- Johan > Did C ever make serious money? What was the evolution rate of C? Is C or > not the basis of systems programming? > > My point is that a good language withstands time because its useful. > Perl (5) is in use and will be in use. Not because is bad/good and/or > Perl 6 will come into place, but due to a fact it has a domain. And Perl > has a domain not because other languages cannot do what Perl does, but > due to the fact they cannot do it the WAY Perl does. > > The way a language is constructed semantically has a one to one > correspondence with the way your brain works. For some people, Perl's > syntax hits a sweet spot and they stick to it. For others, it is > confusing, alien and can - apparently - make you a bad programmer (I > have seen bad programmers in every programming language I know, so > that's not a characteristic of Perl). > > In the same way, people that parallel program, work with Intel's > extensions/compilers, CUDA and/or Erlang. Try to convince an Erlang > programmer that his language is obsolete. They will laugh at you and > point out many examples. > > Conclusion: A language is walking down the road of obsolescence when its > semantic structure becomes irrelevant to the way people think and its > domain dies. Neither of that is true for Perl (5) and the whole shebang > has very little to do with Perl 6. Frankly, I do not see any original > point in this article, IMHO. > Have not read the original article, but I agree. BTW, on ##programming on Freenode, people have been bitching about every language under the sun. My signature quote this time is relevant, and is taken from http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/COBOL-the-New-Age-Programming-Language/ , as a reference to Python’s home page where they used to boast that “NASA uses COBOL” which while technically true, is not fully honest, because given NASA’s history, budget, and diversity, it uses a very large number of old and new programming languages and other technologies. Also see: * http://xkcd.com/519/ ( Moreover, NASA’s software development unit is just the tip of the iceberg. ) But I guess I should not give a Midrash ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrash ; “study” - not “mid-rash” ) to a joke. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Rethinking CPAN - http://shlom.in/rethinking-cpan NASA Uses COBOL. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2659.html Mon, 04 Feb 2013 04:11:18 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by G. Wade Johnson On Sun, 3 Feb 2013 10:04:42 +0200 Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote: [snip] > -> Web 2.0 -> HTML 5 anyone?). A lot of people have been criticising > languages like C and C++ all the time with all sorts of criticisms, > but both are popular among open-source developers, and still used in > production a lot[C++] and often are the best choice. Perl has some > advantages over Ruby or Python or JavaScript or CoffeeScript or [snip] This reminds me of one of my favorite programming language quotes: "There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses." --- Bjarne Stroustrup G. Wade -- A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. -- Alan Perlis http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2658.html Sun, 03 Feb 2013 23:57:57 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Georgios Magklaras On 31/01/13 09:10, Johan Vromans wrote: > http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere > > We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do > about it? > > -- Johan Did C ever make serious money? What was the evolution rate of C? Is C or not the basis of systems programming? My point is that a good language withstands time because its useful. Perl (5) is in use and will be in use. Not because is bad/good and/or Perl 6 will come into place, but due to a fact it has a domain. And Perl has a domain not because other languages cannot do what Perl does, but due to the fact they cannot do it the WAY Perl does. The way a language is constructed semantically has a one to one correspondence with the way your brain works. For some people, Perl's syntax hits a sweet spot and they stick to it. For others, it is confusing, alien and can - apparently - make you a bad programmer (I have seen bad programmers in every programming language I know, so that's not a characteristic of Perl). In the same way, people that parallel program, work with Intel's extensions/compilers, CUDA and/or Erlang. Try to convince an Erlang programmer that his language is obsolete. They will laugh at you and point out many examples. Conclusion: A language is walking down the road of obsolescence when its semantic structure becomes irrelevant to the way people think and its domain dies. Neither of that is true for Perl (5) and the whole shebang has very little to do with Perl 6. Frankly, I do not see any original point in this article, IMHO. Best regards, -- -- George Magklaras PhD RHCE no: 805008309135525 Head of IT/Senior Systems Engineer Biotechnology Center of Oslo and the Norwegian Center for Molecular Medicine/ Vitenskapelig Databehandling (VD) - Research Computing Services EMBnet TMPC Chair http://folk.uio.no/georgios http://hpc.uio.no Tel: +47 22840535 http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2657.html Sun, 03 Feb 2013 21:51:39 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by eashton On Feb 2, 2013, at 11:12 PM, Peter Scott <Peter@PSDT.com> wrote: > > This is, basically, Jon Orwant's prophecy coming home to roost: "People > are going to move on and do something else." If Perl 6 was ready for > prime time, it would be a different story. Jon and I had the same thought, but he for the more technical aspect and I for the more social aspect. That P6 isn't ready yet, even after so many years, isn't really wholly to blame for the lack of vigor in numbers of users. That we are the same people having the same conversation 15 years on might have more to do with it than anything. e. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2656.html Sun, 03 Feb 2013 15:35:58 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Peter Scott On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 23:21:24 -0600, Jeremy Fluhmann wrote: > On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Peter Scott <Peter@psdt.com> wrote: >> Yesterday I was talking with a colleague about configuration management >> frameworks like Chef, Puppet, and Saltstack. Those are Python- and >> Ruby- based. He asked whether there was anything in that family based >> on Perl. After extensive searching, I was forced to conclude that >> there wasn't. >> >> > Just to throw out there something I came across a while back: (R)?ex - > http://rexify.org/ > Written in Perl and appears to be very similar to Ansible. Thank you! That appears well worth a closer look. -- Peter Scott http://www.perlmedic.com/ http://www.perldebugged.com/ http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0137001274 http://www.oreillyschool.com/certificates/perl-programming.php http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2655.html Sun, 03 Feb 2013 13:45:08 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Shlomi Fish Hi Johan, On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:10:47 +0100 Johan Vromans <jvromans@squirrel.nl> wrote: > http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere > > We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do > about it? > I now have something more to add. Recently I've done some small (but important) tweaks to http://perl-begin.org/ to make the intent of it clearer, and to avoid some what I perceived as pointless marketing-speak. People should now be able to use it to learn Perl immediately and effectively, without all the advocacy speak. As I noted on #perl , I suspect that part of the reason most people still prefer jQuery ( http://jquery.com/ - the “write less, do more” JS library) instead of Angular JS ( http://angularjs.org/ - the “Superheroic JavaScript MVW Framework”) is because jQuery’s motto tells you why you would want to use it, while Angular JS uses hyperbolic adjectives (“Superheroic” - bleh). As Mark Twain notes in http://palc.sd40.bc.ca/palc/Archive/writingtips/twainadjectives.htm : <<<<< When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them—then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice >>>>> I really liked the old http://www.cpan.org/ motto of “stop reinventing wheels - start building spaceships” because it uses a good analogy from something more tangible than software, for the philosophy behind CPAN. Many people now feel that Perl 5 and perl 5 are almost useless without the ability to use external CPAN modules, and we at #perl on Freenode have been suffering a lot of heat from people who want to use Perl without it. That put aside, I think that making some CPAN distributions and packages have less dependencies, faster to load (Moo instead of Moose, etc.), and less intimidating will be a good thing. One of the criticisms I heard about the Ruby and Ruby gems culture is that “everything is a framework” and that “a simple script to move files. 100 MB of RAM”. In any case, I suggest we promote Perl simply by hacking: improving existing CPAN distributions and other applications, creating new ones that we lack (like CMSes, etc.), and not worry too much about whether or not Perl is the hippest/most-in-vogue/coolest/"OMG-Ponies!!!"/etc. language, because hip and fashions come and go (HTML -> Dynamic HTML -> Web 2.0 -> HTML 5 anyone?). A lot of people have been criticising languages like C and C++ all the time with all sorts of criticisms, but both are popular among open-source developers, and still used in production a lot[C++] and often are the best choice. Perl has some advantages over Ruby or Python or JavaScript or CoffeeScript or whatever, even in the core language (to say nothing about CPAN), and I find that Ruby or Python's implicit scoping cause too many problems and are unpredictable, which is why I normally still prefer using Perl 5. So stop worrying, because eventually anti-something hype or propaganda is getting old, and people use common sense and logic to criticise it, and they eventually don't buy it even if the media keeps parroting the same something. Like we say in Hebrew, “the lie does not have legs”. Even if the television or mainstream media is broadcasting non-stop propaganda, most of the people who matter will rather buy into stuff they see on the Internet, even if it seems completely irrelevant or even silly such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangnam_Style or whatever. Maybe I'm too naïve and optimistic (and have a positive view of life, humans, and the world), but I think that “truth” will eventually prevail, only that we must constantly seek better and more up-to-date “truth”s, because “existence exists” and is dynamic and there will never be a “Theory of Everything” or the “Omega” of human enlightenment. We must constantly seek it. I just hope that humanity or our planet does not perish in this course. [ Sorry for the flow of consciousness towards the end. ] Regards, Shlomi Fish {{{ [C++] - I personally feel that C++ gives me too much rope to hang myself, so in order to save me from myself, I prefer sticking to C, but it seems to work fine in projects such as Qt, KDE, or web browsers or whatever, where programmers are more clueful than I am, at least in this respect. }}} -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Perl Humour - http://perl-begin.org/humour/ The Spanish Inquisition does not expect Chuck Norris. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2654.html Sun, 03 Feb 2013 08:04:52 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Jeremy Fluhmann On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Peter Scott <Peter@psdt.com> wrote: > On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:10:47 +0100, Johan Vromans wrote: > > http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days- > are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere > > > > We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do > > about it? > > This is, basically, Jon Orwant's prophecy coming home to roost: "People > are going to move on and do something else." If Perl 6 was ready for > prime time, it would be a different story. > > Yesterday I was talking with a colleague about configuration management > frameworks like Chef, Puppet, and Saltstack. Those are Python- and Ruby- > based. He asked whether there was anything in that family based on > Perl. After extensive searching, I was forced to conclude that there > wasn't. If there had been, we would have tried to make it work. That > sucked. Not trying to blame anyone, and not trying to claim I have an > answer. Just generally disappointed. > Just to throw out there something I came across a while back: (R)?ex - http://rexify.org/ Written in Perl and appears to be very similar to Ansible. Jeremy -- Jeremy Fluhmann *http://twitter.com/jfluhmann** http://jfluhmann.edublogs.org **http://linkedin.com/in/jfluhmann** Texas Linux Fest - http://www.texaslinuxfest.org Texas Open Source Project - http://texos.org YAPC::NA 2013 - **http://www.yapcna.org/yn2013/*<http://www.yapcna.org/yn2013/> http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2653.html Sun, 03 Feb 2013 05:21:33 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Peter Scott On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:10:47 +0100, Johan Vromans wrote: > http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days- are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere > > We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do > about it? This is, basically, Jon Orwant's prophecy coming home to roost: "People are going to move on and do something else." If Perl 6 was ready for prime time, it would be a different story. Yesterday I was talking with a colleague about configuration management frameworks like Chef, Puppet, and Saltstack. Those are Python- and Ruby- based. He asked whether there was anything in that family based on Perl. After extensive searching, I was forced to conclude that there wasn't. If there had been, we would have tried to make it work. That sucked. Not trying to blame anyone, and not trying to claim I have an answer. Just generally disappointed. -- Peter Scott http://www.perlmedic.com/ http://www.perldebugged.com/ http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0137001274 http://www.oreillyschool.com/certificates/perl-programming.php http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2652.html Sun, 03 Feb 2013 04:12:14 +0000 Why Idea systems should be remixed [was Re: Perl's Glory Days AreBehind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere] by Shlomi Fish On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:10:47 +0100 Johan Vromans <jvromans@squirrel.nl> wrote: > http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere > > We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do > about it? > To quote Larry Wall from http://www.perl.com/pub/1997/wall/keynote.html : <<<<< I have a book on my bookshelf that I've never read, but that has a great title. It says, "All Truth is God's Truth." And I believe that. The most viable belief systems are those that can reach out and incorporate new ideas, new memes, new metaphors, new interfaces, new extensions, new ways of doing things. My goal this year is to try to get Perl to reach out and cooperate with Java. I know it may be difficult for some of you to swallow, but Java is not the enemy. Nor is Lisp, or Python, or Tcl. That is not to say that these languages don't have good and bad points. I am not a cultural relativist. Nor am I a linguistic relativist. In case you hadn't noticed. :-) >>>>> Throughout history, various religions, cultures, human languages, works of art, and other idea systems, were mixed-and-matched cross-pollinated one another, were forked and splinterred, and brought new memes into everywhere. An idea system that did not incorporate ideas from elsewhere quickly became stagnated and inbred, and were then largely forgotten. Furthermore, some idea systems “died”. Few people nowadays are pure Stoicists (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism ) and even the most devote Jews don't take the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentateuch_%28disambiguation%29 to its letter, and no one nowadays wants to program in Fortran I, COBOL or ALGOL (and yes, programming languages are, aside from their utility, idea systems). But the idea systems behind these languages live on. The Perl idea system has proven incredibly influential on most programming languages that came after it, so it has won. Maybe most people no longer find it adequate to use Perl 5, or think that some more in vogue languages are better, but the Perl influence lives on. I'm not a Perl tribalist, in the sense that if my customer prefers something else, then I use it, and try to make the best of the situation, even though I'm not 100% happy, which like I note in http://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1747.html is something that Cognitive Therapy now recommends to do based on Stoicism. And I've started to write some projects in Ruby. People have been crying that Perl is dead, but it is very much alive, just as most people in the United States and in Great Britain have not heard of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great or of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin , but their incredible legacy still lives on, and many people carry the “memes” that they originate or establish in their mind and hearts. So what should we do: 1. Continue to improve perl, Perl and CPAN. We cannot have perl 5 stagnate, and the Perl 6 implementations are still incomplete and tend to be under-performing. 2. Don't worry about people using Perl instead of something else that still carries its legacy, or different legacies. 3. Continue to import new ideas from other places. 4. Continue our tendency to say that “There's more than one way to do it” implies that some of these ways are using other programming languages, and that some languages got some things right more than Perl 5 or even Perl 6, or just differently - http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/57811.html . 5. Tell people that newer is not necessarily better. 6. Don't worry about battling Perl against statistical accusations of stagnations like TIOBE , GitHub statistics, Google trends, etc. , because these things are silly “My schwartz is bigger than yours” which the uninformed masses may fall for, but intelligent and wise people, who are the true movers and doers, don’t. 7. Finally, the language called “Perl 5” that we will use 20 years from now will be very different than the perl-5.000, but it will be more modern, more adapted to the times and hopefully better. And I'm almost sure that Perl’s legacy will live on and Perl will be remembered, even if no one uses something called “Perl”. ----------------------------------- I hope I made myself clear. Furthermore, a lot of recent trends can be dismissed as silly, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat -s, but lolcats have such a low barrier for entry (almost everyone can take a photo of a cat, or whatever and caption it using Inkscape or whatever), and a lot of lolcats are funny or amusing (yet often insightful). It is a whole new idea system and a very subversive at that, so much that both China and Iran blocked the Cheezburger network in their firewall, because they are afraid of it weakening their political power-structures and dogma (and as silly as it may seem, they are right about that). The important thing to note is that one should “embrace change”. See: http://www.robcottingham.ca/cartoon/archive/this-brain-this-brain-fire/ Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ What does "Zionism" mean? - http://shlom.in/def-zionism When Chuck Norris uses git, he takes a coffee break after initiating every git commit. And then he waits for the commit to finish. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2651.html Sat, 02 Feb 2013 07:46:16 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by eashton On Feb 1, 2013, at 3:43 AM, Johan Vromans <jvromans@squirrel.nl> wrote: > > An impressive list of Perl success stories would surely do no harm. Well, ORA has a few at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/perl/news/success_stories.html Perl is a niche language which is a way of saying it has a well defined range of purpose and is one of the reasons it's still on the map. If there is one thing that could be done, it's cleaning up CPAN which is simultaneously the best thing that ever happened to Perl and the worst thing that ever happened to Perl. Even the most dedicated Perl fanatic cannot help but be frustrated when installing 1 module becomes a 100 module install marathon. I don't anticipate that will be embraced any more now than in the past when I have attempted to get some enthusiasm behind such a project but, I can always hope for the future. :) e. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2650.html Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:02:09 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Richard Foley s/warn/warm/ # ? -- Ciao Richard Foley http://www.rfi.net/books.html On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 05:01:21PM +0000, Nicholas Clark wrote: > On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 05:54:53PM +0100, Richard Foley wrote: > > On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:25:32PM +0000, Nicholas Clark wrote: > > > I'm not sure what the major difference is there with the point I was making, > > but never mind. > > No, me neither. > > That's the second "basic reading comprehension" failure for today. > (Fortunately the first one was a private message to my sister, so it's > not archived for posterity) > > Maybe I should give up and go to the pub. (Even if the one I'm thinking of > thinks that flash is the right thing to make a website from) > > > It's doing extremely well, thank goodness. And the marketing is ground-swell, > > which proves individuals can make a difference, if there's enough of them ;-) > > More warn bodies! > > Nicholas Clark http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2649.html Fri, 01 Feb 2013 17:39:25 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Johan Vromans eashton@mac.com writes: > I don't think perl needs marketing, it needs developers who anticipate > and meet needs of those who might use the language to solve a problem. > Most folks outside of the various communities really don't care what > tool they use, just that it does the job. An impressive list of Perl success stories would surely do no harm. -- Johan http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2648.html Fri, 01 Feb 2013 17:06:25 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Nicholas Clark On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 05:54:53PM +0100, Richard Foley wrote: > On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:25:32PM +0000, Nicholas Clark wrote: > I'm not sure what the major difference is there with the point I was making, > but never mind. No, me neither. That's the second "basic reading comprehension" failure for today. (Fortunately the first one was a private message to my sister, so it's not archived for posterity) Maybe I should give up and go to the pub. (Even if the one I'm thinking of thinks that flash is the right thing to make a website from) > It's doing extremely well, thank goodness. And the marketing is ground-swell, > which proves individuals can make a difference, if there's enough of them ;-) More warn bodies! Nicholas Clark http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2647.html Fri, 01 Feb 2013 17:01:33 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Richard Foley On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:25:32PM +0000, Nicholas Clark wrote: > On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 09:51:54PM +0100, Richard Foley wrote: > > It's sad, but it's true: > > > > Developers/Engineers like to think their creation is so cool, OBVIOUSLY > > everyone's going to buy one. This is/was Apple's approach. > > > > Sales people don't care about their product quality or usefulness, so long as > > everyone buys one. This is/was Microsoft's approach. > > > > 'Nuff said. > > I disagree on that last paragraph. Because, Microsoft is a commercial > organisation. The problem it is trying to optimise is "how to make more > money", which means selling more stuff (or the same stuff for more money) > I'm not sure what the major difference is there with the point I was making, but never mind. > Whereas Perl is an open source creation. People are doing it to solve > other problems. > Yes indeed. > And, who is doing the marketing for Linux? After all, it's doing rather well > on servers, and portable devices. > It's doing extremely well, thank goodness. And the marketing is ground-swell, which proves individuals can make a difference, if there's enough of them ;-) -- Ciao Richard Foley http://www.rfi.net/books.html http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2646.html Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:55:07 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Nicholas Clark On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 09:51:54PM +0100, Richard Foley wrote: > It's sad, but it's true: > > Developers/Engineers like to think their creation is so cool, OBVIOUSLY > everyone's going to buy one. This is/was Apple's approach. > > Sales people don't care about their product quality or usefulness, so long as > everyone buys one. This is/was Microsoft's approach. > > 'Nuff said. I disagree on that last paragraph. Because, Microsoft is a commercial organisation. The problem it is trying to optimise is "how to make more money", which means selling more stuff (or the same stuff for more money) Whereas Perl is an open source creation. People are doing it to solve other problems. And, who is doing the marketing for Linux? After all, it's doing rather well on servers, and portable devices. [And, 10 years ago, who would have thought that the mobile phone platform wars would have been between a BSD variant, and Linux derivative? :-)] On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 03:23:14PM -0500, eashton@mac.com wrote: > > > Perl was originally built to beat out scripting alternatives so this is fairly logical. > > Actually, no, it wasn't. It was built by one guy to solve a problem that one or more combinations of existing tools did not. I think pulling the 'marketing' vector won't succeed any more now than it has in the past, mostly because it eventually lacks the enthusiasm that only a few really can attain. And popularity is rarely an indicator of quality. > > Perhaps the question might be better asked, what does C, and even moreso Java, have that perl apparently lacks. I'd like to stress that Science is repeatable, whereas stuff you make up is not. ie http://blog.timbunce.org/2008/04/12/tiobe-or-not-tiobe-lies-damned-lies-and-statistics/ but the most recent dump that emerged from the dark areas of Tiobe suggested that C is more whatever-it-is-that-they-claim-it-is than Java So, somehow, C's marketing is better than Java (and all the rest) Which is strange, as C is far less trendy than Java, decades older, missing a bunch of enterprise buzzwords, easier to screw up, not what universities are churning out, etc And who is marketing C? Who is making money from selling it? Which, I think, is Elaine's point. C is doing something right. Without actually trying. Or at least, without trying to fake it. Nicholas Clark PS The article is poor. It fails to claim that Python is going nowhere because the current RHEL ships 2.6.6. Which would be only fair, given what they comment about Perl. PPS Note, 2.6.6, not 2.6.8. Either RHEL's numbers lie, or RHEL has failed to keep up with 2 CVEs: http://www.python.org/getit/releases/2.6.8/ http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/02/msg2645.html Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:25:42 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Richard Foley It's sad, but it's true: Developers/Engineers like to think their creation is so cool, OBVIOUSLY everyone's going to buy one. This is/was Apple's approach. Sales people don't care about their product quality or usefulness, so long as everyone buys one. This is/was Microsoft's approach. 'Nuff said. -- Ciao Richard Foley http://www.rfi.net/books.html On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 03:11:37PM -0500, eashton@mac.com wrote: > > On Jan 31, 2013, at 3:10 AM, Johan Vromans <jvromans@squirrel.nl> wrote: > > > http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere > > > > We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do > > about it? > > I believe the old saying goes, "There's no such thing as bad publicity....". > Of course, it pairs well with, "Familiarity breeds contempt...and children." > :) > > I don't think perl needs marketing, it needs developers who anticipate and > meet needs of those who might use the language to solve a problem. Most folks > outside of the various communities really don't care what tool they use, just > that it does the job. > > e. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/01/msg2644.html Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:52:11 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by eashton > Perl was originally built to beat out scripting alternatives so this is fairly logical. Actually, no, it wasn't. It was built by one guy to solve a problem that one or more combinations of existing tools did not. I think pulling the 'marketing' vector won't succeed any more now than it has in the past, mostly because it eventually lacks the enthusiasm that only a few really can attain. And popularity is rarely an indicator of quality. Perhaps the question might be better asked, what does C, and even moreso Java, have that perl apparently lacks. e. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/01/msg2643.html Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:23:32 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by eashton On Jan 31, 2013, at 3:10 AM, Johan Vromans <jvromans@squirrel.nl> wrote: > http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere > > We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do > about it? I believe the old saying goes, "There's no such thing as bad publicity....". Of course, it pairs well with, "Familiarity breeds contempt...and children." :) I don't think perl needs marketing, it needs developers who anticipate and meet needs of those who might use the language to solve a problem. Most folks outside of the various communities really don't care what tool they use, just that it does the job. e. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/01/msg2642.html Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:11:50 +0000 Re: Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Joel Limardo After skimming the article at the heart of the Slashdot discussion I think there are some reasons for the popularity of Perl-alternatives: a) Large corporations have supported some languages or standardized on them (Sun/Java, Apple/Objective-C). b) Some languages are hot because of a perceived low learning curve, widespread framework availability and adoption (JavaScript, frameworks like Mootools, JQuery, et. al.) c) In cases where you would think Perl would be a natural choice Bash seems easier in some cases, "people are opting for the simplicity and portability of Bash rather than Perl in these cases..." Prospective Strategies: A: Powerhouse Corporate Endorsement Our beloved computing industry has companies like Apple and Google at the forefront and they are both decidedly un-Perl-friendly. But who would have ever thought that these companies would be where they are today ten years ago? Certainly not me, that's for sure. My guess here is that, like everything in computing, sooner or later the computing market is going to shift again. Perhaps rather than computers or cell phones we will all start buying robots or something. Let's look into the future of computing, whatever is coming *after* this round, to become the defacto language. B: Slash Thine Learning Curve I'm all for building a smaller, more compact, version of Perl that is as absurdly restrictive as other languages. We can call it LockBox Perl or Nope-You-Can't-Do-That-Anymore Perl. Whatever. (There used to be something like this -- EmbPerl or something but I think it died because the Perl community didn't like it.) Allow for some special instruction at the top of scripts that allows you do actually use Perl instead of the locked-down version. That way corporations can simply say -- 'for project X you CANNOT use the cool unlock instruction.' Once Perl is in use it becomes easier to sell them onto more advanced features/syntax. C: Wait a Minute There... Here is where I think a marketing campaign would work. I think there is growth in the Linux user base and folks who want to experiment with the 'coolness' of Linux will inevitably experiment with scripting. The certification examinations for Linux all center on Bash, so it is no wonder that it is rising in popularity. If someone took the time to analyze this they might find the Bash adoption curve mimicking that of Linux adoption or perhaps Linux certification attempts. If this is correct then a good strategy might be to steer people toward trying Perl while they are banging away at the console. Perl was originally built to beat out scripting alternatives so this is fairly logical. On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 2:10 AM, Johan Vromans <jvromans@squirrel.nl> wrote: > > http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere > > We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do > about it? > > -- Johan > -- http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/01/msg2641.html Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:20:56 +0000 Perl's Glory Days Are Behind It, But It Isn't Going Anywhere by Johan Vromans http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/0235220/perls-glory-days-are-behind-it-but-it-isnt-going-anywhere We know we suck at marketing, but is there anything we are going to do about it? -- Johan http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/01/msg2640.html Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:54:38 +0000 Re: Petition for Relicensing http://learn.perl.org/ and other PerlSites Under a Less Restrictive Licence by Shlomi Fish Hi brian, On Wed, 02 Jan 2013 06:05:32 +0400 brian d foy <brian.d.foy@gmail.com> wrote: > In article <20121228112205.1f8b3cee@lap.shlomifish.org>, Shlomi Fish > <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote: > > > > I am hereby asking you to consider relicensing the content of > > http://learn.perl.org/ and other perl.org sites, which is currently under > > the restrictive Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NonDerivatives > > licence ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ ) under a > > less restrictive licence, to allow for maximum reuse, redistribution and > > building upon, which in turn will help promote the Perl 5 and Perl 6 > > programming language and ecosystem. > > > I've never heard anyone complain that they stopped advocating Perl > because of a license issue. > > I'd rather see people make new content to add to the old content. For > any content that I've generated, I want the licenses to stay the same. I think you're missing the point here. People won't likely completely stop advocating Perl, but there are a few risks here. One of them is that people won't contribute. Not everyone would want to fork the perl.org repository and make pull requests only to have their content later licensed as CC-by-nc-nd, which they often find unacceptable. I'm not sure one can even legally fork and modify such a repository due to the Non-Derivatives licence. On the other hand, with http://perl-begin.org/ , you can take https://bitbucket.org/shlomif/perl-begin , fork/clone it , modify it to your heart's content, and then set up http://not-perl-begin.com/ which would be similar to http://perl-begin.org/ , and as long as they provide a clickable link to http://perl-begin.org/ and otherwise provide the necessary attribution, it will be perfectly OK by me[1]. But you cannot do that with http://www.perl.org/ , and people will feed bad about contributing to something that they and other people cannot benefit from after that. Do you think the Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects would be as large as they are today if they were under an -ND licence? Do you think perl or CPAN would be? Part of the reasons why open content works is for the same reason that open source works - because every one can benefit from it. Right now on https://github.com/perlorg/perlweb/issues/63 , the main argument that Ask (ABH) gave on his last comment was that he's afraid spammers and other Internet low-life will build upon this content for their stuff. Well, spammers (being scam) often don't respect text under restrictive, non-redistributable, licences (nicknamed “All Rights Reserved” or “ARR” in Creative Commons speak), and will likely have no problems with CC-by-nc-nd. Furthermore, even if they set up link farms based on 100% public domain content, it would still be unethical, something that many ISPs, hosting providers and search engines. won't favour and will take down, and often illegal. On the other hand, like I said, making something CC-by-nc-nd deters people from contributing, building upon, forking, and in general “remixing” the content. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_%28book%29 Part of my motivation for the request was in hope to put the first edition of the book /Beginning Perl/ under a less restrictive licence, but as one comment there says this is up to Apress, but relicensing *.perl.org under a less restrictive licence would still be a step in the right direction. Hope that helps. Regards, Shlomi Fish {{{ [1] - some people cannot even get the attribution part of the CC licences right, but that's a different issue. }}} -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Funny Anti-Terrorism Story - http://shlom.in/enemy I don’t believe in fairies. Oops! A fairy died. I don’t believe in fairies. Oops! Another fairy died. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/01/msg2639.html Mon, 07 Jan 2013 19:01:16 +0000 Re: Petition for Relicensing http://learn.perl.org/ and other Perl Sites Under a Less Restrictive Licence by brian d foy In article <20121228112205.1f8b3cee@lap.shlomifish.org>, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote: > I am hereby asking you to consider relicensing the content of > http://learn.perl.org/ and other perl.org sites, which is currently under > the restrictive Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NonDerivatives > licence ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ ) under a less > restrictive licence, to allow for maximum reuse, redistribution and building > upon, which in turn will help promote the Perl 5 and Perl 6 programming > language and ecosystem. I've never heard anyone complain that they stopped advocating Perl because of a license issue. I'd rather see people make new content to add to the old content. For any content that I've generated, I want the licenses to stay the same. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2013/01/msg2638.html Wed, 02 Jan 2013 02:05:40 +0000 Re: Petition for Relicensing http://learn.perl.org/ and other PerlSites Under a Less Restrictive Licence by Shlomi Fish Hi Leo (and all), On Fri, 28 Dec 2012 15:57:05 +0200 Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote: > Hi Leo, > > On Fri, 28 Dec 2012 12:31:53 +0000 > Leo Lapworth <leo@cuckoo.org> wrote: > > > Hi Shlomi, > > > > On 28 December 2012 09:22, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org> wrote: > > > Dear Karen, > > > > > > I am hereby asking you to consider relicensing the content of > > > http://learn.perl.org/ and other perl.org sites > > > > Please direct your request here: > > > > https://github.com/perlorg/perlweb/issues > > > > I will thanks. > Done: https://github.com/perlorg/perlweb/issues/63 Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ UNIX Fortune Cookies - http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/ I learned a lot from my teachers, and from my friends more than my teachers, and from my pupils the most. — Rabbi Hanina Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.advocacy/2012/12/msg2637.html Fri, 28 Dec 2012 14:08:18 +0000