Many of you know I am trying to sell my home. On Saturday I had an open house. During the open house I was wearing an O'Reilly (ORA) shirt. One of the guys who came to see the house asks:
"Do you use O'Reilly software?"
I said "No, I read some of their books."
After a while he asked what I do for a living, I replied:
"I write Perl for a living."
He responded, "Oh, well Perl is O'Reilly software."
I then went on to explain that he is WRONG! That started me thinking (uh oh)... is Perl an ORA product? This guy thinks so, and I bet he isn't unique. I went over to perl.com and looked as someone who doesn't know much about Perl.
If you think about it, it does look (based on the site) that Perl is an ORA product. The graphic at the top "O'REILLY PERL.COM THE SOURCE FOR PERL" Ok, so perl.com is the "source for Perl" and perl.com is apparntly owned, operated and maintained by ORA. So far, looks like it could be an ORA product.
Basically, look at the whole page. The 'source for Perl' is a big ORA advertisement. Look then at python.org and ruby-lang.org. Both sites look like grass-roots sites with no corporate backing or ownership.
So, I guess it could look like Perl is ORA software to some folks. Is it a bad thing? A good thing? Does it matter?
And thus look at perl.org as well.Look then at python.org and ruby-lang.org.
While I see how one could get a biased view from a dot-com site, checking out the dot-org site clearly shows a lot more neutrality.
Re:Just looked in the wrong place...
petdance on 2002-07-29T14:22:21
While I see how one could get a biased view from a dot-com site, checking out the dot-org site clearly shows a lot more neutrality.Of course, the distinctions between
.com and .org are not well-known among most programmers today, and for that matter, may be just a historical footnote, in practical terms. Re:Just looked in the wrong place...
KM on 2002-07-29T15:01:13
But, perl.com plainly states on it that it is the "Source for Perl". Why would anyone go anywhere else but the "source"? I would wager 95% of people looking for something look at.com before .org or .net (let alone .tv, .info, etc...) So, if I see this place is the "source for Perl", why would I go looking at the .org? After finding this "source for Perl" I could see how people could assume Perl is an ORA product of some sort. Re:Just looked in the wrong place...
jordan on 2002-07-29T15:14:49
I'm sure it added to the impression that Perl was an ORA product when Larry Wall was an employee of ORA.
This is no longer the case, but once impressions are made they are only changed with strong motivation.
Performing a search on Google for "Perl", guess what comes up first? You guessed it, Perl.com: The Source for Perl -- perl development, perl
... .
Perhaps this kind of association between Perl and a corporation have made it more attractive to conservative companies (unlike Python and others)...
But the facts have to be made more visible at the site: Perl is Artistic and GPLed. It does not belong to O'reilly.
Re:Who pays Larry's check?
KM on 2003-01-23T15:54:31
Who pays Larry's check? The Perl Foundation... not ORA. Technically, Larry is unemployed.
