Re: [MacPerl] Microsoft funds Perl open-source effort

[pvhp@forte.com (Peter Prymmer)]

Douglas A. spore wrote:

> A CNET news artical "Microsoft funds Perl open-source effort" by Steven
> Shankland. Announces the teaming of Active State and MicroSoft. I quote
> fronm the artical.
> 
> "The realms of Microsoft and open source software just got a little
> closer.
> 
> Microsoft has hired ActiveState Tool Corporation to beef up the Windows
> features of the Perl programming language, an open-source technology. In
> the open-source movement,programming instructions may be freely shared, a
> contrast to the carefully guarded code from Microsoft.

Yes.  Actually AFAIK Microsoft was giving Dick Hardt money back when
he called his company "HIP Communications" (more than 4 years ago).

> Anyone who believes this last statement is very nive. Just look at what MS
> did to Sun and Java, or for that matter the great majority of the teaming
> efforts that MS has undertaken. (editorial comment ;-)

Take a look at libwin32 for a good dose of "Gee this is very complicated in
C++ so let's make it just as complicated in perl, and since we don't really 
like pod so we're gonna leave this whole thing undocumented" - type code :-)

> I know that this is off topic but I thought that eveyone would like to know
> what is happening in the windoze comunity.

MS is not the only big computer company paying attention to perl.  MKS had a 
port of perl to NT for years (still do AFAIK).  IBM let a contract out to MKS 
to help with porting perl to OS/390 and I think has a new contract to conduct 
a new port to OS/400 (IBM needs for perl to be an SAA-Rexx replacement since 
much of their Tivoli system is written in perl).  The company formerly known 
as DEC, now known as Compaq, ported majordomo to vmsperl and integrated 
vmsperl into the VMS port of the Netscape commerce server.  Novell had one 
of their engineers take an early Activestate port of perl and make it build 
a NLM for Netware (it is now available on CPAN).

It would appear that Apple has been beefing up Applescript in recent 
releases of it's Mac OS, but I think they played a part in the Mach/MkLinux 
port and that comes with perl.  Hence to the extent that Apple recoups revenue 
from MkLinux they too are profiting from perl (not to mention the internal use 
within Apple engineering).  So I guess that the question 
becomes Will Apple invest anything in perl?

Peter Prymmer


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