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Perl Programming

Open Source Community reaction to ActiveState & Perl 206

Posted by Hemos from the how-bad-will-it-be dept.
feeder sent us a recent Techweb story purporting to talk about the Open Source community reaction to the announcement from Microsoft and ActiveState about ActiveState being funded to extend Perl support under Windows. The story is indicative of some of the standard concerns-but how much do we have fear - what does everyone think?
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Open Source Community reaction to ActiveState Perl More

Open Source Community reaction to ActiveState Perl

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  • Off topic answer (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That's Joe Camel. When Congress put him out of work it was quite a blow to him. Depression set in and he started abusing drugs. It was mary jane for a while and then the harder stuff -- crack, horse, blow and so forth. He had to sell his stuff to support his habit and finally resorted to dealing. He was arrested in 1996 for possession of cocaine -- he had several ounces on him that he was going to sell.

    He turned states' evidence in return for a reduced sentence and made it out on parole in 1998. He's been through rehab, doesn't even smoke anymore, doesn't wear those shades that he used to wear to hide his dilated pupils and has his self respect back. He's been trying to break back into show business (You may have seen him in The Mummy earlier this year) and this is a good steady job for him.

    Now you know.

  • *Nthing* has changed (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09, 1999 @10:40AM (#1858076)
    The entire reason that Perl on Win32 exists in as good a form as it does is because Microsoft wanted to ship Perl in the NT Resource Kit a few years back, having recognized its importance, and hence paid for the port.

    In doing so, a somewhat roughshod port & a set of new packages were created. Since then, things have been cleaned up a lot and Win32 is a well supported Perl platform, largely due to MS's original investement.

    Now they're just doing exactly the same thing. Of *course* they want to make Perl MS-proprietary if they can. However, they really can't. Perl itself is not controlled by MS or ActiveState, so there's no way they can get total crap into *true* Perl.

    ActiveState always has, and will continue to, distribute a version of Perl that it has compiled, no doubt together with some new modules etc., but I don't really think this will change things too much. It certainly can't affect Perl on other platforms since they can't directly affect the real Perl distribution, so all us Unix people are quite safe.

    Now, they could fork Perl and produce an MS-only version, but would that be *so* bad? *If* this happened, then ActiveState would certainly continue to graft in any enhancements to the Perl core and hence users wouldn't lose anything much, except for perhaps a time delay, much like the one that we have now waiting for AS to give us a new build.

    We can all argue that adding Win32 features is poluting Perl, but I can't really agree. There is no logical reason Perl should not expose Win32 APIs (via modular modules) other than the MS-is-shit-Down-with-MS-I-am-a-sheep attitude.

  • Based on what I've read of users' comments on the latest incarnation of VB, along with some comments Microsoft have let slip about warming up to Perl, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft were to replace VBA with Perl in the future. It makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. I'm sure those of us who are stuck with MS apps would appreciate being able to work with Perl rather than VBA.

    We can only hope AS keep MS from making Perl for Windows as trashy as VB. If not, I'm sure there will always be a non-Microsoftized distro of Perl for Windows.

  • "Standard" Perl? I thought it was whatever Larry thinks is cool.
    ---------------
  • According to the article, the only aspects that will (well, have been planned *so* far) to not be OS are installation procedures. I
    find it hard to believe because of my utter cynicism towards MS, though. We'll see.


    The only reason the installer isn't open sourced is probably because it's Install Shield, or some other commercial Windoze installer. Not a big loss IMO. Give me rpm or a debian package anyday.


    ---------------

  • Just look at it. M$ helps fund an Open Source project. It's all spin control.


    "Look we don't want to destroy Open Source. We're helping out with a prominent Open Source project!"


    It's all about M$ getting their name in the papers with this positive Open Source spin.


    ---------------

  • It's doubtful that an installation program or various other proprietary add-ons would be covered by the GPL in any case. The GPL can't solve all the world's problems.

    BTW: perl is dual licensed under the GPL and the Artistic license.
  • Posted by d106ene5:

    Copyrights and IP law generate government condoned monopolies.

    Then storm the bastille you twit. The laws as they stand allow activestate to turn a buck. Move to Madagascar if it bothers you.
  • Posted by d106ene5:

    there is no formal definition and

    read the code to the perl interpreter. it'll tell you in a pretty straightforward manner what is kosher and what isn't.

    its formal enough to get munged into machine code somehow, so that should be formal enough for you.
  • Posted by d106ene5:

    Whatever. His comment was a veiled jab at perl, which is far less buggy than the updated-daily kernels for linux.
  • Posted by d106ene5:

    That has to be the most incomprehesible piece of gibberish I've read all day.

    You could ghost write the unabomber's manifesto.
  • Posted by &E:

    But the point is, I think, that once Perl has been adapted to make better use of Win32-specific functions, that MS could change/tweak/modify those functions. ActiveState would most certainly be aware of these types of changes coming down the pipe well before you or I, and can make anticipatory changes. Suddenly, the new functionality that Perl is supposed to have only works on Windows 2000, or NT4/5. So you want to keep using Perl, right? but you're using Win98. Now you have to upgrade your OS!

    Trickery Trickery Trickery!
  • Posted by &E:

    Don't forget that MS has a habit of introducing functionality in one release, then removing or hiding parts of it in the next release. Like your MS DOS with your Win98 (all sorts of switches and options from the DOS that shipped with Win95 are ... poof! gone)
  • It's not the OS extensions you gotta worry about, it will be the IIS-specific extensions to Perl that MS will use to "extend" and marginalize the standard. And they'll sell it in some nifty development tool, probably compulsarily bundled with IE, IIS, Office, and Windows, people (non-geeks) will start using that, and that will be the start of the fragmentation.



    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
    -jafac's law
  • Ok.. You can ruin Java, but stay away from my Perl!
  • Yes, the camel is the symbol of perl because we used it on the cover of the O'Reilly book. Larry asked for a camel because he thought that a camel was ugly but well-adapted to its environment. So the association was made by Larry, but because of the book.
  • Is anyone going to moderate this spam/flamage? The response is way out of proportion to the original post.
  • I recently did a perl/Tk script where I was moving the current version daily between my Windows NT 4.0 workstation at work and my Linux box at home (I work at home several days a week). The most noticeable differences were:
    • Tk::FileSelect (or it's front-end top methods getOpenFile() and getSaveFile()). The response to various configuration paramaters varied greatly - '-initialdir' and '-defaultextension' is ignored and '-initialfile' was buggy on the NT Windows platform; on the other hand, the '-filetypes' command was supported on Windows and not in the X version. I eventually ended up wrapping it to hide the differences.
    • The tear-off menu items are nonfunctional in Windows, but can't be removed.
    Other than this, there were some minor font sizing descrepancies, and the usual expected differences stemming from the basic nature of the underlying OS - file names, etc.

    Having a portable windowing toolkit is a good thing... Even if you don't actually run a particular app on more than one platform, you need learn only one toolkit for both - MS must hate that. And of course, Perl is just about the best thing since sliced bread.

  • My apologies, |_124rD_K1n6.
  • Alright, Microsoft pays somebody to extend Perl. So what? If it's OpenSource then the community can take whatever, if anything, they want. If not its a waste of money on their part. There's still a lot more non-NT stuff out their and Perl itself is still evolving. So if they take an anti-OpenSource attitude NT users will be faced with using revisions of Perl that are behind the Open Source community.

    Most of the article was FUD. So what if people make money off of writing installers based on Perl? People make money already writing Perl as developers.

  • yeah i cant understand why 'tcl/tk' combo, isn't used more (ah mention the name 'sun' anyone?). If anyones interested, go to the scriptics.com [scriptics.com] site and take a gander.

    m$windows has always lacked a standard scripting language, unless you count vbscript, vba and visual basic. dont fancy learning 'm$-perl' though.
  • can u give 'us an url to go peek at the win32 perl version yr using. i remember having a look at it many moons ago and i wasn't impressed. guess i'll have to goto perl.org.....
  • the fact that they put out C++ hasn't killed the compiler market, has it?

    though the number of competitive commercial 'c' compilers on the windows platform hasn't exactly florished.
  • Well, I can see a whole new market from this. Helping all those poor MS suckers (oops I mean developers) to code their scripts without using MS extensions. Already, I've made extra money working wih NT admins cleaning up their PERL scripts because they can't get these scripts to glue anything outside of Win32 enviroment. So come on MS I need a Ferrari for next year!!

  • Then, after they have distributed it with the the operating system (probably in a Service Pak)


    Well it is a bit late for fears like that. MS has been distributing a version of Perl for quite some time now. It comes on the NT Resource Kit CD. It is Perl 5. I don't know what build it is. But most of the latest Win32 modules of much value do not work with it any longer. I am not sure if they distribute updated builds in the RK suplimentals. I use Perl on a daily basis in my Winblows NT admin duties. It is a godsend for the junk MS gives for administrators. Do we need MS to put their hands into to stew from which Perl cooks? That is VERY debatable.
  • This reminds me of a language I once briefly used in university -- some sort of constraint-solving mini-language -- where the only help available was a few screenfuls of text printed out by the "help" command. It printed out the BNF grammar for the language. And the semantics of the language are...?

    Seriously, reading the code may tell you what it does (with much struggle); it doesn't tell you that what it does in one case is actually a bug.

  • And Perl is far more buggy than /bin/true -- kernels are simply more complicated than language interpreters, which don't have to interact with buggy IDE/SCSI/whatever chipsets, dodgy motherboards, or eccentric TCP/IP stacks because -- guess what? -- the updated-daily kernel worries about the problem and provides abstractions for userland code to sit on top of.
  • In the heat of my rant, i used "open standard' interchangeably with "standard.'

    Allow me, to quote some you and some of the others, to try and make my argument more intelligently.

    My point was that I have never seen a standard that M$ whole heartedly embraced WITHOUT some tweaking on their part. (This is not to say the other companies, as someone pointed out Netscape HTML, have not done this as well.) But i think we all have seen M$ attack various markets, seemingly because they are not currently in them, and then, via agressive marketing alone, create some bloated, over-hyped, PRODUCT.

    I may be wrong, and ALL companies do this! Ok. That said, then let me ask this, why does it seem that M$ is always trying to subvert a standard?
    Why, therefore, has M$ with all the R&D and marketing $$ to spend been unable to produce an OS that is as stable as Linux is? An OS put together by a band of programmers committed to supporting proposed standards? It seems that the Linux contributors are trying to make better sw that works WITH the standards. Change for the bettter, not change to sell product.
    I think that i read a quote by Linus that he would be happy with an OS that you never had to buy an upgrade for!
    Perl, at the moment works fine for most people. Can anyone honestly say that, if there ever became an MS Perl, you'd ever be able to stay with one version?

    FWIW

    Russ
  • Sorry the examples i used misspoke my point. Yes most of these standards are proprietary. My point was that, these standards have achieved some legitmacy in the market and had gained a following. Instead of supporting that following, M$, IMO, instead chose to try and subvert those standards, either by mudding the standard with their own "extensions" or creating somthing to directly compete.

    Sorry for the "whacked" examples.


    Russ
    As far as RTF and Postscript go, actually when you look under the covers AND how RTF is pushed by M$, they are not THAT dissimilar, especially when you look at business documentation. If you remember prior to RTF and True Type fonts, Adobe had a tremendous amount of the market. People were just begining to use Postscript as a file interchange format and not only as an output format. There was a need, as documents were now containing more fonts, graphics, etc., to be able to better interchange documents among applications. There was movement to use postscript as the underlying format for documents since it supported all types of documents. M$, instead chose to create and promote RTF as the interchange format of choice. So, what was originally intended to support any type of doucment interchange NOW supports, primarily wordprocessor documents, and Word documents the best. My point with this example was that, instead of trying to support Postscript as a format for interchange of documents, as all publishing types/houses use postscript pretty much, and Adobe Type 1 fonts, instead RTF was created so that M$ could have control instead.
  • I would agree that Netscape has also muddied the HTML waters as well. I think they are guilty too!

    But my point, and my examples weren't good, was that why MUST M$ always create a competing standard? As a SW user, as i'm sure you are, doesn't it frustrate you that, in answer to a problem you may have with software that you use, M$'s response is to use M$-only products?
    (What if i don't want IE in Win98 cus i want to use Netscape or Opera? Why do i HAVE to have that chunk of code in my OS?)

    As far as the protocols you mentioned, i think someone responded that they HAD tried to extend their implementations of them.

    Sure, to use your example, Netscape muddied HTML, did M$ HAVE to do it as well?

    Was there truly a need for MS Media Player, or did that need arise when M$ could no longer control Real Audio?

    Is Dierct3D better than OpenGL? (Or is it the fact that M$ can call the shots on the former?)

    And to use your own examples, Java, HTML, Basic, and XML. Shouldn't the fact that, you admit that these have been/will be perverted, kind of not speak highly for M$ both in the past and in the future?

    FWIW


    Russ
  • True! The point about Poscript, that i made to someone else was, that at the time, BEFORE True Type and RTF, there was an effort to promote Postcript as an underlying format for all types of documents. M$ response was to announce and create RTF. Initially, the thrust of RTF was supposed to be for ALL document types, not just wordprocessors. M$ was able to push this wedge and get energy focused on RTF.
    Ultimately, as you correctly describe, RTF has emerged, not as a universal document interchange format, but as a wordprocessor interchange format, that works best for Word.

    FWIW

    Russ
  • Probably not, in my opinion. They don't do things without reason, and Perl simply isn't a threat to them. Their nearest competing product is Visual Basic, but that is really targetting a completely different audience. I think that just this once, Microsoft is just doing what it's saying it's doing. Perl doesn't work as well on Win32 as it does on Unix. This makes them look bad. So it is in their interest to do something about it. It is a win/win situation.

    Well, apart from ActiveState. They're gonna get screwed, obviously. Why companies still enter into "partnerships" with Microsoft is a mystery to me. The best they can hope for is to get assimilated.

  • Perl is not released under both licenses. It is released under EITHER license.

    However, anything released with perl should necessarily be released under either as well, not only one specifically, because then users of it no longer have the choice.
  • > to embrace and extend Perl MS just has to call it something other than Perl.

    Right. Great. If they want to do it, more power to them. I don't believe that free code is only to be used by good guys for good purposes, and I won't define what "good" is. Free is free. As long as they don't call it Perl, I don't care what they do with it.
  • I also don't think MS can kill Perl.
    However, your parallel of MFC/C++ with J++/Java is somewhat flawed. Adding MFC libraries to C++ made no difference because if you're writing apps in C++, it pretty much _has_ to be platform specific. The reason one might port to Java isn't speed, it's portability. You can write Java apps and run them anywhere.

    MS made their Java IDE create Java apps that would run ONLY on Windows (unless you jumped through hoops). (Actually, only on a MS JVM running on windows... even worse). So anyone using J++ from MS was defeating the ENTIRE purpose Java was created. What were they thinking? They also made thier JVM so that it wouldn't run 100% pure apps as well as MS java apps. Again, not trying to stay true to the Java concept.

    No, MS didn't kill Java... but they tried as hard as they could to co-opt it. What will they do to perl? Perl's licence should keep them from making proprietary Windows 'language extensions', but since when has MS cared about that? they'll do it anyway, and let the layers deal with it.

    And if they do add 'extensions' to Perl, and make a VB-style IDE for Perl? --It makes CGI programming, Perl programming easy! Yaay, use it! (oh, and if you don't change lots of settings, the Perl will only run under a MS interpreter. The MSPerl interpreter is free, though, and easily available, so no problem, right?).

    It won't kill perl. Most Perl is used on platforms that MS can't influence, and by people who don't like them. They may try (and they may not, who knows?), but I don't think anything will come from it.

  • Only the Artistic License is mentioned. Perl is licensed under both the GPL and the Artistic License. So no, the changes will not be made available under the same license.
  • Sorry, I was using 'standards' in a generic sense and in that Microsoft likes to mess with them. Of course there is no ANSI or ISO standard for PERL.

    There is a "Standard Perl", which is the official codebase designed and released by the PERL core team. That's what I don't want messed with. PERL modules are fine....

  • Get used to it... (Score:3)

    by John Fulmer ( 5840 ) on Wednesday June 09, 1999 @10:14AM (#1858114)
    ActiveState may not be out to 'embrace and extend' PERL, but MicroSoft probably is.

    This is probably the first step toward a Microsoft PERL[tm]. Then, after they have distributed it with the the operating system (probably in a Service Pak) and given it away to thousands of developers and developer CD, the embracing and extending comes.

    Many of us will know the difference, but many, many more will not. What we need to do is be able to educate developers on what the word "Standards" means (MS has a really weird definition) and come up with further strategies on how to prevent corporations from hijacking our software. The GPL is good, but nothings been tested yet.

    Hang on. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

    jf

  • Wrong. GPL is much more restrictive than the "Artistic" license because of it's "viral" abilities.
  • As far as MsgBox() is concerned...

    use Tk;
    use Tk::Dialog;
    MainWindow->new->Dialog(-title => "MsgBox", -text => "MsgBox is not needed - use perl/Tk. You get the added benefit of cross-platform compatibility.", -wraplength => "4i", -default_button => "OK", -buttons => ["OK"])->Show;

  • Medichlorians would be first-level primitives. Booleans would use light\dark instead of true\false. You destroy an object by setting its alignment to dark, or maybe by incrementing its anger counter. A | (lightsaber) would be used in place of a ;. The core distribution would include the Light and Dark modules. use Dark| lets you create objects which have kill and choke methods. And of course, "The source is strong in this one."
  • It's very possible. Check out "Windows NT User Administration" by O'Reilly Press. The book is all about managing an NT network using ActiveState's Win32 port of PERL.

    NT is one of the things I have to admin at work. I have no choice. At least the PERL makes it more interesting (and flexable)
  • If the MicroPerlGUI stuff required a proprietary core, it would fade because M$ can't keep up with the legions of Perl hackers, so it would be the loser in a fork. And if not proprietary, it won't fork Perl.

    If they did it as a module, some enterprising hacker would quickly write a module to make theirs appear like the Tk stuff.

    --

  • Microsoft CANNOT steal Perl (Score:4)

    by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) on Wednesday June 09, 1999 @02:13PM (#1858121)
    I get really passionate about this because I believe in libre source software. Folks, no matter what M$ does, they cannot steal the source. You have your copy. M$ cannot take that back.

    Suppose the worst the Artistic License lets them do is release their own MicroPerl with proprietary core additions that they don't release source for. Now what?

    You still have the real Perl. And M$ has just inherited a can of worms, trying to keep their proprietary version in sync with the legions of Perl hackers maintaining the real thing. If they succeed, it robs them of a lot of manpower, and for no gain, because, either way, they are incompatible with, and have lost the utility of, the thousands of CPAN modules. Can you spell W-O-R-T-H-L-E-S-S?

    Now let's go to motive. Why would M$ want to hijack Perl? I mean hijack as in destroy, not hijack as in use productively. Their reason for destroying Java is to prevent "write once, run everywhere" as a Windows alternative, and to piss off a competitor (Sun). Guess what? Perl isn't a similar threat, and there is *no* competitor to damage.

    You naysayers and doomsayers remind me of politicians with knee jerk reactions. Grow up, figure out what's between your ears, learn how to use it for yourselves without being a slave to Microsoft. Whether you follow them slavishly, or react against them slavishly, matters not. You need to think for yourselves, not for or against Microsoft!

    --
  • Well, it could go either way. On one hand, to quote Larry, "perl is a post-modern language"... and as such adapts to it's surroundings. If Microsoft Windows is it's surroundings, then it would make perfect sense to integrate API calls and the like into perl. Whether it's developed by a proprietary company, or developed openly, doesn't matter too much: what matters is that more developers will use perl.

    free software broke into the market by creating better, faster, and cheaper products than commercial ventures did. I see no reason why it wouldn't be different here... once a idea reaches "critical mass", some developer will start the development of a free version of whatever module is in demand. The important thing here is.. perl will be exposed to alot more people.. which means that perl will be developed alot more quickly.

    Maybe we will wind up paying for Feature X for awhile, but if enough people want it, a free version will be created.

    --
  • If anyone "killed" java it was sun.

    One only need to look at their recent jsdk fiascos to see where sun is great at mucking up their own ideas. They should have given control of Java to the community long ago.

    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • This is just MS defending itself from Christiansen's intiative to create all Unix facilities for NT via Perl. Well, maybe not. I just had to chime in.
  • Could this be a new attempt to firewall themselves legally?

    "We (M$) didn't make that product, Ms Reno. AS did it. Go talk to them."

    Plausible Deniability?
  • to purchase Windoze in any of its forms. As a sysadmin for a mid-sized company, I'm planning to ditch as many of our currently small pool of Windoze boxes ASAP.

    The fact that perl would be more redially availalble on the platform is of no real comfort. What good is having a great tool if the underlying OS can't be trusted to simply run?

    Give me *nix in any form and I'll find a way to get my user's work done with it. Fix that MacOS, too....but keep that Imac away from me.
  • Scary? I do it for a living! I probably could have written that book! I'm babysitting 1200 NT boxes in four states, with nothing more than the resource kit and my trusty Perl scripts. Anything I need to do, I can write.

    I agree that M$ can't break the core because ActiveState isn't the sole repository of the code, like they did with Sun. I would be happy if they would just FINISH the implementation! I want my fork() and gethostbyname() and stuff.

    If they add an interface to the GUI (even MsgBox() would be good) that's a bonus, but I want all the "not implemented"s fixed first.

  • Even if they keep it open they can do a great deal of damage by implementing MS Windows-specific functions. That would fragment Perl and introduce much confusion into even the usage of the term, "Perl". Would even the GPL protect against this kind of "embrace and extend" strategy? I think not.

    Actually, I don't know about this. IMHO, there will always be a standard Perl distribution released by the Perl development community. Seriously, Perl is as likely to fragment as the Linux kernel source tree. Besides, it's the developers choice to add on extra modules to add functionality, such as Windows API calls. The ActiveState distribution will likely be this core Perl release along with these extra modules. And if they change the core of Perl, they themselves stated they would release these changes to the community. So where's the confusion? Perl is still Perl, and the only way to use platform dependant features is to expressly choose to (ie, use WinAPI::blah)... it's not as if there's going to be a WinPerl out there.

  • Nice theory, and I'd agree with it completely, except ...

    Why would M$ want to hijack Perl? I mean hijack as in destroy, not hijack as in use productively. Their reason for destroying Java is to prevent "write once, run everywhere" as a Windows alternative, and to piss off a competitor (Sun). Guess what? Perl isn't a similar threat, and there is *no* competitor to damage.

    Unfortunately, Perl runs on more platforms than Java.

    So it is a potential "write once, run anywhere" threat.

    Not at the user application level (unless Tk starts spreading rapidly) ... but at the server software level.

  • Although Windows 9x leaves a lot to be desired on the stability front, it is a mistake to assume that all code that comes out of Microsoft will be bad. There are a lot of very talented, dedicated people working at Microsoft, and although they produce their fair share of crap, there are a lot of good products that they produce. DirectX is a good example - the first couple of incarnations were shit, but now they've got a pretty neat multimedia API. Sure, it's got some problems *cough*DirectSound*cough*, but the quality is improving all the time.

    I've met some of their engineers, and I can assure you that the ones I met were earnest, dedicated and professional, and committed to producing something cool and neat. Now, I agree that they've got some pretty sick bastards higher up the scale in management, but don't let that fool you. The engineers are still human.
  • While I agree with the gist of your argument, TrueType was developed by Apple and later purchased/licensed by Microsoft. While Postscript is a general-purpose stack-based page-description language, RTF is an interchange format for word processing. They don't serve the same purpose at all.
  • Wake Up Sheeple

    In a time when you are forced to watch your heros go corporate(linux, Redhat, the whole "geek" lifestyle in general) what you do and how you respond speaks volumes to the true nature of your intents.

    Mostly what we have here are the wailing of spoiled 3/_33+/5+5 and "LIfe style in a box" sellouts who think becuase they call themselves "GEEKS" they are any less vapid then yuppies, buppies, hippes and republicrats.

    Each and every time something comes along , fact or fictional, that rocks the tree house the wail goes up. The lattest round is Perl. Hey, guese what, theres been perl on MS machines for a while now. Do you feel threatened by that? Dose your moral ineptitude fall apart in the face of that fact?

    Perl on windows means more people are expoused to perl....which if you follow the IDEAS behind the life style most of you have bought from your local mall, is a GOOD THING. The more people turned on to these ideas the better.

    Purists, jihaders and thier little cousins the 3/_3+3 will of course see this as a BAD THING, because it erodes the power base they can call thier own. Tin tyrants with smiles and "You are evil becuase..." rehotric do more harm to the idea of a Free Flowing Open Exchange of Ideas than all thier little nightmare monsters and spindoctored fears.

    "MS is the enemey!!!"
    "No Redhat is the enemy!!!"
    "Look now IBM is getting too big again, they are the enemy!!"
    "This chesee sandwich im eating is the enemy!!"

    Fear, as the little green muppet said, leads to
    the Dark Side. And folks,as the skinny heroin junky once sang. Welcome to the jungle.

  • So your saying that people ("non geeks" in your terms) using perl are the problem?

    No clearer statement of 3/_3+3/5+ slime need be said, that says it all.

    Hey knucklehead, get off your jihad crusade stallion and realize the you me and all inbetween are PEOPLE, and that we not only make up soylent green, we make up the world you live in.

    Its got to be a sorry little kingdom where in you are besiege 24/7by the hounds of the PEOPLE, stelaing your music, your lifestyle, YOUR SCRIPTING LANGUAGES..


    How do you survive brave warrior of the Chosen? Tell us your holy secrets.


    [and this my fellow readers is what the core of many problems stem. learn from it to avoid it]
  • If you want to truly disarm MS you dont stand and ball like a child whose pop rocks supply has been cut off....You learn thier tactics and make sure there is no hope of them using them on your own stuff or stuff you care about.

    To wit, read a little more about Active State perl and its particulars before you start the hand wringing and appocylpictical chantings.

    As the plastice bristly hair miltary man once said, after I pulled his cord, "knowing is half the battle"..(the other half is a good sucker punch but they didnt put that on his recorded sayings.)

    Learn and grow....Bellyache and get milk of magnesia
  • Great post.

    It doesnt have the typical I HATE MS rants that garner approval, it doesnt mention Linux or name drop people working in the field, and you dont mention once that you are a Penguin Paladin.

    If i hadnt already posted to the thread I would have moded it up...but i already opened my big trap on this one.

    Thinking for yourself is a scary thing for the jhaders, it means they wold have to have an origanl though, not some ready built one.

  • tad jumpy there, aint ya?

    so rather than post a cry for help, why dont you try to get to the meat of the matter...or is it simply that its all reaction and no action..

    Like i said before, the real tell of a persons worth is in thier actions.

    whomp
  • Personally, I dont care what Microshaft does with PERL as long as any added 'features' are open source and under the same license. I think they should use modules (CPAN?) for any type of extra functionality they want, but I guess they will do it their way.
  • So, how 'damaging' are all the Unix specific features of PERL? Did these features fragment PERL? Are you confused by the Unix features? If you are going to bash OS specific features of PERL be thorough!
  • Umm.... perl is GPL'd. And it's covered by the Artistic license as well, to avoid the viral properties and much of the nastiness of the GPL.

  • This really isn't a big deal (Score:3)

    by Elian ( 10270 ) on Wednesday June 09, 1999 @10:12AM (#1858140) Homepage
    So, M$ gets some custom Win32:: modules, and the win32 platform-specific code gets some extra stuff in it to make up for the limitations in Windows. Big deal. This is no different from the platform-specific bits for VMS, MVS, OS/2, Plan9, or half a dozen different flavors of Unix.

    Anything that ActiveState puts into the core has to be covered by perl's licensing terms, so the source'll be in the main tarball. And if they really want to fork off the source tree and make changes they don't release, well, that's OK too by perl's license.

    Besides, 90% of the perl people write is platform specific anyway, so who really cares? Is it so much worse to have a perl program that does Windows specific stuff than it is to have one that does something Linux specific, or VMS specific? It's not like code that plays with the registry (or /proc, or the SYSUAF) is all that portable.

    Perl will remain perl regardless of what M$ might like to do to it. They've as much chance of coopting perl as they do coopting Linux.
  • We've already seen what happens when M$ gets it into their Collective mind to "embrace and extend" an accepted, (semi-)open architechure language. The short term result of Microsoft's focus on Visual J++ was a tremendous boost in Java development and usage -- even without using the Windows-specific extensions.

    Of course, in the long term, VJ++ didn't help Java's progress, for the following reasons:

    1. Java is/was not Open Source. Java is a business oddity, an attempt to make money off of a language. I've never understood Sun's business plans concerning Java. As much as one would like to see Microsoft take a hit in the judicial system, it's hard to see the Sun-Microsoft case as helping the development of Java. In any event, Sun's stranglehold on Java prevents developers from effectively providing true cross-platform compliance a la perl, as well as system-specific extensions that may only apply on a given system (e.g. interacting with the Registry without having to write a JNI-compliant DLL).

    2. Microsoft attempted to Visual-Basic-alize Java. VJ++ 6.0 was a disaster. It tried to attract the VB crowd with drag-and-drop components and lickity-split event handling, and in the process, failed to take into consideration that people might be interested in creating applications that would work with something other than IE4+. (This is not to say that all IDEs or RAD tools are evil, only ones that force you to use proprietary language extensions.)

    Perl cannot be subjected to these pressures. Perl32 hackers have already lived in a world with multiple versions available (before all versions were absorbed into ActiveState's) and will be quite willing to return a multi-version world -- and thereby use the version that suits them best. It's up to the individual developer to make their own choice, based on project and platform concerns. And choice is good.

    I cannot envision a scenario in which Microsoft support (even for evil purposes) can harm the future of Perl. Let 'em take their best shot, I say. That way, we'll know what Win32:: modules need developing. :-)

  • ...allow his beloved BASIC be cast aside and be replaced. He still thinks that it's a good programming language.

    Can you imagine WordPerl? BillG thinks it's oh-so-clever to have BASIC as the scripting language for the Word (even though Word macros look so unlike any real BASIC programs that you'd never be able to tell that they're supposed to be the same language).

  • But a propriatory MS package is all that is required.

    Yeah, Perl died when Sybperl and Oraperl were made, what with being proprietary extensions and whatnot. Not!

  • Inate paranoia makes me suspect of anything that MS touches. Personally, I hope you're right, and I also hope that people simply won't use anything that creates incompatabilities. I do know it can be complicated writing cross-platform code in MS J++. Small changes can be as problamatic as big in that they seem innocuous.



    May the corporate world wake up and accept the future that benefits all.
  • Microsoft can contribute a lot. If it's good, and if it benefits Perl (like a fork() for the Windows platform) it will be added to Perl, be it in the core, or as a module in the standard library. If they come with crud, it will never find its way to Perl.

    I think that's more like only if they come out with crud (which sure they will), will it find its way into Perl :-P

  • I found this quote from the article to be particularly odd: One Perl user, who did not want to be named, said: "It doesn't stop a company with no interest or standing in the Perl community from exploiting years of hard work, donated by a cast of thousands, for its own gain." Indeed, it doesn't. The point is, there's nothing that's supposed to stop people from doing that! That's the whole point of the license!

    If you want to place restrictions on the software you write, by all means go ahead. If you are serious about restricting other users from doing things you don't like, I suggest you go much further than even the GPL and simply license it under specific terms for specific uses to each user. That way you can pull the license any time you like if someone's doing something you don't want him to do.

    cjs

  • The worst case scenario that I can think of is that ActiveState develops some Tk-like library that let's you create GUI widgets, but is not cross-platform.

    OK. Then we have Tk stuff on UNIX and Tk-mutant stuff on Windows.

    How bad is that really? Will this kind of "balkanization" halt the development of good Perl scripts for the Unices? I doubt it.

    Color me not worried.
  • "But I don't think any language COULD live up to that amount of hype"


    A language made by George Lucas?

  • Sorry, I think this must be wrong. I work with one fellow who discovered at some point that an OS upgrade to an NT IIS server broke all his Perl stuff; so he abandoned Perl, in favour of VBScript. Honest to every deity you can imagine.

    To me, a webserver always has Perl available. If NT 4.0 broke my server, I know what I would have replaced. Hint: it wouldn't be Perl. But for many NT admins, the point is single-sourcing. If it's an MS product, it's in; and if it's not an MS product, it's out. This is because of the putative greater compatibility between programs on an all-MS box.

    And never you mind the evidence! Integrated solutions work, no matter what your experience is. If your experience suggests otherwise, you need thousands of dollars in support services.

  • in some ways and bad in others. Perl is not going to be hijacked by M$, it cant be. I think M$ wants to add more perl functionality to IIS and BackOffice because they keep getting their asses kicked by Apache. No one other than MSCE soul less NT admins really use ASP. Perl is used on a majority of servers because it can run anywhere unix can run, which means high end super systems or cheap scrapped together Pentium 100's with alot of RAM. I would like to see perl ported to Windows so I could use them instead of writing arcane batch files or VB scripts. I can't run my batch files through emacs to see if I made any naughty little typos.

    Why is there an Office 2000 ad up in the top frame?

  • This shouldn't be too scary. It's my understanding that Perl was created for system administration, and it proved to be a sufficiently general tool that it came to be used for a greater variety of purposes. I've heard it said that Perl is the only thing that makes WinNT administration possible, since those pretty GUI tools don't scale well. I think it's used in NT for user administration, extracting data from log files, etc., the same sort of stuff it's been used for in Unix. Practical extraction & reporting language (or pathologically eclectic rubbish lister. TIMTOWTDI).
  • I'd say that when it comes to java, HP has done much more to
    destroy it than all Redmond inhabitants together. This could change
    though.
  • Java is only the latest occurance.
    Microsoft deliberately killed
    Stac Electronics' Stacker during
    codevelopment for use with DOS 6.0
    and marginalized IBM's OS/2 during
    codevelopment that lead to WinNT.
    I'm sure there are other examples
    I'm missing.

    Java was not the first, and if MS
    has it's way, PERL will not be the
    last.

    Microsoft does not play fair, they
    play to win and they are VERY good
    at it. This is not reason to hate
    Microsoft, it is reason to be wary.

    Bob
  • If you want to optimize Perl for M$ machines, the best way to do it is through M$, simply because they make the OS and they keep the source code private, so their developers will know how to milk the OS before anyone else does. To say that M$ shouldn't be funding Perl development on Windows implies that someone else should be funding it. Who? Borland? Cygnus?

    Furthermore, this deal testifies to the strength of Perl in the marketplace. I'm sure Gates would be much happier if he could ignore Perl and focus corporate resources on marketing Visual Basic.

    And if M$ feels that having a good Perl implementation will lure people from the Unix world to NT, they might actually put some competent people to work on the project. M$ Word was a decent word processor ... back when they were competing with WordPerfect.

  • The idea of Perl replacing VB/VBA is seems a little farfetched. MS has a huge investment in VB, and there is a large developer community dependent on it as well. VBA is also relied upon heavily in many Win apps at the moment. Perl is a different tool, IMHO, for the most part. On NT, I use Perl for CGI scripting ... I use VB when I want to quickly whip up a GUI that will be used on Windows only.

    As far as I can see, MS seems to try to keep its fingers in as many pies as possible ...

    YS
  • First off, would you say that Netscape was also in the business of perverting standards for extensions they made to HTML? The rest of your examples are just as bogus. For example, MS Media Player is not a standard, but an application that just happens to play Real Media files and Quicktime files, as well as other files (.avi, mpeg's, etc). No standards subversion there. Chrome != OpenGL (as noted in another comment, the better view would be Direct3D vs OpenGL, but even that is not a case of standards perversion). By that rational, 3dfx is just as guilty for creating glide. In fact, with the exception of Java, all your "examples" don't relate to your argument. However, to refute you, let me provide you with a small sampling of standard protocols that Windows operating systems support that Microsoft *hasn't* attempted to pervert (to my knowledge, anyway -- please prove me wrong if you can).

    • PPP
    • TCP/IP
    • HTTP
    • FTP
    • IPX
    • etc

    Yes, Microsoft implemented these standard protocols, but AFAIK, they did not attempt to subvert them in any way. In fact, the only standard that comes to mind besides Java or HTML (or perhaps Basic, if you want to go that route) that MS has or will prevert (besides their own formats and protocols, of course) is XML.

  • The main reason that Micros~1 had such an easy time subverting Java is that it was mainly a consumer product, so Micros~1 controlled the ONE VM that the vast majority of users would be using. Most users with IE didn't know a VM from a toaster, and didn't really care, as long as the pretty little animations work OK. With PERL, Micros~1 is trying to compete with web servers running various flavors of UNIX, and people using PERL are usually knowledgable enough to get a standard PERL for NT if they don't want the extensions. So bending PERL to their omnipotent will is much more difficult.
  • 12dec0de's post is the first informed post Ive seen on the artistic license. to repeat his words: it is often said the GPL is too restrictive ... this situation will show us what a more lenient license will produce.
    to embrace and extend Java MS will have to (1) re-implement Sun's VM and class libraries and (2) call it something other than Java.
    to embrace and extend Perl MS just has to call it something other than Perl. They can use the existing Perl code as a springboard just as used BSD's TCP/IP stack when Windows needed to get on the Internet in a big hurry.
  • let's not get our knickers in a twist over this.

    MS P++ may well have a clicky drag-and-drop forms design front end before they're done. so that folks can design things that look like Perl/Tk apps without thinking. We can safely ignore this if we refuse to lobotomize ourselves by consorting with wizard interfaces & what-you-see-is-all-you-get dialog designers.

    MS will probably come up with MSPAN is to promulgate Win32-specific P++ modules. It'll only become insidious if MSPAN has better stuff than CPAN. That'll only be a problem if Perl Mongers start thinking in a Win32-centric way. Figure MS will come up with P++ modules for every conceivable Win32-specific feature and every embraced and extended standard they've assimilated. I hope that MS spends their own billions funding that effort. I also hope the Forces of Good will spend our own efforts on platform-agnostic modules that will dwell in Light in Holy CPAN with the Saints.

    The Dark Lord will not succeed in embracing Perl and extending it into MS P++ unless we yield to the temptations we know that he'll extend.

  • Perl will influence W32 for the better (Score:3)

    by yzorderex ( 18577 ) on Wednesday June 09, 1999 @03:46PM (#1858161) Homepage
    and that OS will improve as a result.
    and Micros~1 Needs a good modern language
    and the API requirements of a Win32 port will tend to open now closed Micros~1 code.

    Seems like win-win to me.
    Perl cannot be corrupted, but it can and will improve its operating environments
    I want Perl as deep inside as we can get it
    Lets call it Beauty and the Beast


  • This is a scary title:

    Windows Nt Administration Using Win32 Perl:
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos /ASIN/0735700346 [amazon.com]

    I wonder if it's even possible without something like a complete overhaul of ActiveState.
  • HELLOOO? Is there anybody in there? The GPL is more free. If MS successfully embraces and extends perl with proprietary extentions, and then does not release those under GPL, then YOUR freedoms have been infringed upon. You can't look at the source. You can't give a friend a copy. You can't add your own extensions. If MS added stuff and THEN GPL'ed it we wouldn't be HAVING this discussion.

    Why is it that people always assume corporate presence is part of a "free market"? Wake up call: people like microsoft depend heavily on government intervention to enforce their stupid patents and copyrights. This is not free. This is usually called a monopoly.

    Repeat after me:

    Copyrights and IP law generate government condoned monopolies.

    This is not a difficult concept to grasp. Sure, its supposed to spur competition, but modern corporations like microsoft have become very adept at exploiting it.
  • For the most part this is probably harmless, adding more cruft to Win32::* is no biggy, and it won't affect us non-windows folks anyway, only help the poor bastards stuck maintaining NT or some such. There is only one concern I have... if they add stuff to the core.
    Microsoft does not have the respect for programing language design that they should. Look at VB, its practically designed by focus groups. As long as there remains a sanity check in force on what gets added the core of Perl we should be fine. But the last thing Perl needs is a few more weird-ass core methods or syntax kludges, we got enough of those already.
  • Many of us will know the difference, but many, many more will not. What we need to do is be able to educate developers on what the word "Standards" means

    Oh, could you point me to a copy of the ANSI Perl standard? The ISO Perl standard?
  • Open GL Chrome
    Real Audio MS Audio Player
    Quicktime MS Audio Player
    Java MS Jave w/ActiveX


    Wouldn't Open GL / DirectX be a better comparison? Chrome was never even released so I'm not sure how fair of a compairson it to anything is.

    As for the RA, QT, and Java, none of those are open standards, so what's the difference??? RA is whatever Real says it is, QT is whatever Apple says it is, and Java is whatever Sun says it is.

  • Warning: With the GPL you can keep you changes closed as long as you keep it in your company.
    If you distribute amodified version then you must distribute the changes. There is a little trick here, you're not forced to give the changes as long as they don't change the external world.
  • uhmm it is a subset of gpl or so i believe..
    my bad
  • artistic license [freshmeat.net]

    You may charge a reasonable copying fee for any distribution of this Package. You may charge any fee you choose for support of this Package. You may not charge a fee for this Package itself. However, you may distribute this Package in aggregate with other (possibly commercial) programs as part of a larger (possibly commercial) software distribution provided that you do not advertise this Package as a product of your own. [ heh.. Microsoft P++ ? ]

    hrm, it's not gpl.. and it is rather confusing. will they have to provide the source to the changes that they made or just point to where to get a real version of perl? [point 3-a, 3-c in the license.]

  • Re:artistic license? (Score:3)

    by 12dec0de ( 26853 ) on Wednesday June 09, 1999 @10:40AM (#1858170) Homepage
    That is the point too it: they will not have to make the changed parts public as well.

    It is often said that the GPL is too restricive because of the viral properties, but I guess this situation with M$ and Perl will show us what a more lenient license will produce:

    M$ will embrace perl, making nifty additions that only work in the windows version and will follow the letter of the Artistic License by providing very nice links and pointers to the real thing on the following url:
    http://www.microsoft.com/stuff/msdn/more_stuff/d eeply_nested/tools/perl/true_origin.asp
    This url will be linked from nowhere but will be handy when the next trial case comes around.

    And millions of lusers out there will believe for ever after that M$ VisualPerl was invented by M$ Anno Domini 2000. Ask most people what they think where Basic comes from!

    This exactly stated in the Helloween Docs.

    So Long (I rather hug than embrace)

    mfg lutz
  • I have to admit in the perl case I really don't
    see the problem. It isn't like perl is a well
    defined API, there is no formal definition and
    every time I upgrade perl -something- breaks because of a perl change.

    Alan
  • This subject has been bashed to death on the AS Win32 Perl Users mailing list. My final feeling from it is to wait and see what happens. An announcement means nothing.

    Yes, MS probably wants to control Perl and make it proprietary, just being who they are. However, this is AS doing work. They are getting paid by MS, yes, but they are not MS.

    If the hideous thing happens and it looks like AS's Perl is becoming proprietary, there have been several people who are willing to step up to the plate and keep creating a "plain" Win32 distribution. And anything that is proprietary will not make it into core Perl.

    Me, I'm not going to worry.

  • I should bite my tongue, but.... (Score:4)

    by DonkPunch ( 30957 ) on Wednesday June 09, 1999 @11:30AM (#1858174) Homepage Journal
    This not the first article I've seen on this topic where posters refer to, "...the way Microsoft killed Java."

    I respect the programming language Perl and understand that it is very powerful. I am not a Perl coder, however (yet).

    I use a handful of other languages, though. Java is one of them. I'm not "married" to any language (well, ok, C perhaps) and can get along fine if one or more of them is "killed". If Java really was killed, I would say, "Bummer -- it was a nice language," and fire up the C or C++ compiler.

    That hasn't happened yet. Reports of Java's demise are greatly exaggerated.

    It's more accurate to say that Java has not lived up to its hype. In 1996, pundits expected everyone to be porting all of their C++ apps to Java in 3 years. Obviously, that's not happening.

    But I don't think any language COULD live up to that amount of hype or that aggressive a time table. Furthermore, anyone who expects companies to rewrite millions of lines of legacy code written in very popular, powerful languages like C++ is just not being realistic.

    I recognize and thoroughly resent Microsoft's attempt to "embrace and extend" Java with incompatible libararies. Honestly, though, did anyone really think that Microsoft would just stick with Sun's standard and not try to add their own goodies? I look at C++ vs. Visual C++ here. As best I can tell, Microsoft's Foundation Classes have done nothing to harm good ol' C++. When programmers want portability, they just don't use MFC.

    So Microsoft may not support pure Java anymore. So what? Sun and others make perfectly good runtime environments that are zero-cost and run just fine on Win32.

    In short, it just bugs me when I see people pronouncing Java "dead". Especially in a forum like slashdot where FUD is a four-letter word. Why all this langauge "holy war" nonsense anyway? Is anyone really willing to bet the farm that their favorite language today will be their first choice in ten years? If Java goes away and I decide to code in Perl, so be it. The langauge is just a tool.
  • Sarathy Gurusamy made the first announcement of all of this to perl5-porters about two weeks or so ago, and it was discussed quite to death. (Read the archives if you're interested.)

    Things seem resolved for now, unless ActiveState changes things... and if they do, the perl5-porters group will have quite a lot to say about it.

    But for now, things seem just hunky dory.

    BIFFSTER, perl porter
  • Looking over the press release and the FAQ at activestate's web site, I find a couple of interesting things.
    1. "We are very pleased to continue this relationship with Microsoft," said Dick Hardt, CEO of ActiveState.

    2. Microsoft funded the first port of Perl version 5 to Windows in 1993.

    Doesn't sound like this is any new deal, just renewing an old arrangement. It's too early to tell what this will mean, but let's see what happens.
  • Free for use is the biggest load of double speak I've heard lately. It tries to coopt the term "free software" (in the FSF parlance) while completely opposing the spirit of this concept. Let's be honest. Real translation:

    ------------
    Q: Will the work be Open Source?

    A: Most of the work done for Microsoft will be released as Open Source, but some of it will be distributed only as proprietary Win32 binaries. Part of our business model is to sell proprietary components that only run on Win32. Everything that is not Win32 proprietary will naturally be distributed exactly under the same terms as Perl. (Because it has to be.)

    The ActiveState installer for Perl and any other technologies that we develop and want to make money from, such as PerlScript and Perl for ISAPI, will continue to be proprietary Win32 only binaries.

    In summary, some of the things we do will be Open Source, and the remaining things will continue to be proprietary Win32 only binaries.
    -----------

    Look, fact is, yeah - ActiveState is attracting people to Perl. But at what cost?
  • Seeing all the expected flamage over the issue makes me wonder how many people posting actually know anything about coding Win32 Perl ... ActiveState (under other names) was initially tasked and paid by MS to make a better Perl port to NT (so getting more funding to do more work shouldn't be chilling or even surprising) - this being back before the standard source wouldn't build particulaly well with NT compilers.

    Having a clean installer (along with the bonuses of being able to twiddle with the registry and such) makes scripting on Windows boxes so much nicer, particularly when I want to ship out some nice utility to a friend or client that doesn't have a compiler and if they did wouldn't know what to do with it.

    But hey, the article mentions MS, so let the knee-jerk reactions continue.

  • Re:As long as they keep it open.... well, maybe (Score:5)

    by Abigail ( 70184 ) on Wednesday June 09, 1999 @11:31AM (#1858210) Homepage
    Sun Tzu wrote:
    Even if they keep it open they can do a great deal of damage by implementing MS Windows-specific functions. That would fragment Perl and introduce much confusion into even the usage of the term, "Perl". Would even the GPL protect against this kind of "embrace and extend" strategy? I think not.

    FUD
    There are already MS Windows specific functions in Perl. There are Mac specific functions in the Macintosh port of Perl. There are VMS specific functions in Perl. There are Unix specific functions in Perl.

    ActiveState doesn't maintain Perl. ActiveState doesn't determine what goes into Perl and what doesn't. Ultimely, it is Larry who has a final say what goes into Perl and what doesn't. And Sarathy, the current Perl pumpkin. And he listens to what p5p (perl5-porters) have to say.

    Microsoft can contribute a lot. If it's good, and if it benefits Perl (like a fork() for the Windows platform) it will be added to Perl, be it in the core, or as a module in the standard library. If they come with crud, it will never find its way to Perl.

    People should learn to listen to what the people that work on Perl have to say about this before uttering their FUD on forums like this.

    --- Abigail

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