hfb writes "'Rebel Code: Inside linux and the open source revoution', by Glyn Moody was published (last week) and is possibly the best history of the open source phenomenon yet. ISBN: 0738203335. The reference desk kid at the bookstore sneered 'eeew, Linux' when I asked where this title might be shelved...but he works at Sun down the street so one might expect such a response
"While most of the Perl history is familiar to me, I noted one interesting quote from Larry that is food for thought:
"Pretty soon after [Perl] was released there were requests for a Perl newsgroup," he recalls, "and I put that off. I didn't want a Perl newsgroup because I didn't want to be ghettoized. The dynamic of how Usenet worked, at least back then, was if you posted something off-topic for the newsgroup then people would say, 'Well, take it to this other newsgroup," he explains. I didn't want people to be able to say that about Perl, so basically we infested the shell programming newsgroup, and whenever anyone would say, 'How can I do such and so?' we would very politely say, 'Well, here's how you might do it in a shell, but it's easier in Perl, you do it this way,'"[...]
Wall eventually created a newsgroup for Perl; this helped foster a sense of community and provided a forum for feedback. But alongside bug reports and bug fixes, one type of feedback was particularly important. "There's one message I send out again and again," Wall says. "Somebody will send me some sort of thank you or whatever, and I'll respond, 'Thanks, I run on encouragement like that.'"
Times, they sure have changed...
Perl can't escape the fact that it was in the right place at the right time on the verge of the dawn of the W3 and open source really catching on. This book is an excellent tour thorough the events that drove the 'revolution' that helped make Perl what it is today."
