So I was having a conversation about T-shirts and conference swag, and my mind wandered to Spikesource, who were a diamond sponsor at OSCON 2005, with not just a big keynote, but a whole room for testing, from which I got a free t-shirt.
However, hadn't been making much noise since then, and seemed to disappear by OSCON 2006. So I wondered what they'd been up to. They still seem to be generating news, so they're not dead yet*, and I was pleased to discover that they're definitely responsive, as I found a broken link on their website, reported it to them, and had a thank-you within 15 minutes. But what do they do?
Well, in 2005, IIRC my conversation in their "SpikeZoo TestFest Lounge" with their engineers, Perl wasn't the most visible part of their "stack", but yes they did test it, certify it and ship it. And after a bit of digging on their site** it transpires that Perl is part of their SpikeIgnite Platform, and I would infer that it's also shipped as part of Suite Two, as that contains Moveable Type and the Socialtext Wiki, both written in Perl.
So they're busy testing Perl and Perl apps. Presumably they find some bugs (as we know that no software is perfect). But do we ever hear from them - do they ever report anything back upstream? Does anyone in my (mostly silent) readership know?
* unlike a certain other diamond sponsor
**Google constrained with site: and -site: provides results. Their own search engine does not. (I'm using NoScript. I'm sane)
