This reminds me of Evan Czaplicki's great talk where he basically traces the funding of most modern programming languages to search engine revenues :-) https://youtu.be/XZ3w_jec1v8?si=zdL6v9P8LnT7Cbal
DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation
31–40 of 213 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm surprised to learn that Perl is still used. Obviously there will always be legacy code to maintain but these days I can't even remember the last time Perl was mentioned in casual conversation amongst my peers unless we're sharing war stories from the 90s. These days when we find ourselves needing to write a script our first go-to would be bash, and if we need more features or if it's going to be complex enough to…
Most of my coworkers above age 45 still use Perl. I am constantly parsing reports and then generating commands to run from that. I learned Perl in the 90's and it still works great for that. I have to code in Tcl for most of our EDA tools (chip design) but I still parse reports in Perl. The younger engineers use Python and I've learned enough but I really don't care. I'm not writing big systems or anything in Perl or…
I was about to say, Hey, I use Perl, but then I saw this posting with the over 45 qualification. Yep, that's me (way over).
Honestly, I write about a script a quarter in Perl, but it definitely is handy now and then.
Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation
#33Craigslist used to donate over $100,000 every single year. Not sure when that stopped. That is really what kept perl going between the years of 2010 and 2016 or so. The board was actually paying a couple of people to do maintenance on the core repository and code. I believe they still do that but obviously due to deficits that is going to get difficult. It's sad when so many companies are dependent upon perl, but don…
And that's the flaw of the open source business model. You develop something for free, make it available to everyone for free, allow them to modify use and misuse as they wish. Every single step is your conscious decision. And then, you beg for donations, and complain that people are not donating? Doesn't make sense. If you don't want to work for free, just charge for it.
Free software is more than just a business model.
Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's some details about the foundation's financials - https://blogs.perl.org/users/makoto_nozaki/2024/10/understan...
So yeah, they’re doing rough… Not sure what the path out here is? Seems like either finding deep pockets that care about their work or some new revenue stream, but without the cash to fund it I’m not sure how.
Maybe programmers at companies using Perl get together and raise the issue with management? It is a bargain. Imagine the cost of having to rewrite all that Perl.
Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation
#35A: This is great! Perl is much maligned but a fantastic Swiss army chainsaw and still runs so much critical infrastructure. B: I find it concerning that $25k is a notable donation; is the Foundation doing that poorly? I would have hoped this number to have two more digits in it for it to be a front page worthy item.
Plenty of talented developers in Eastern Europe who are $25k or cheaper.
Good luck finding just one talented developer in Eastern Europe willing to work for 25k or cheaper.
Thanks to globalisation, those times are long gone. Any mediocre developer can find a local employer that pays at least that much.
Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation
#36As a duckduckgo user, I think this is great. FWIW, Perl is still on my list to learn :) edit: fixed spelling
Perl is maybe the most enjoyable language I've ever coded in up until I'm forced to read someone else's code which is always hellish.
Most of the someone else's I have read has been in stuff from CPAN, and I recall it as pretty good. I have written some pretty bad Perl, and wish that I had encountered the O'Reilly Perl Best Practices long before I did.
Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation
#37Craigslist used to donate over $100,000 every single year. Not sure when that stopped. That is really what kept perl going between the years of 2010 and 2016 or so. The board was actually paying a couple of people to do maintenance on the core repository and code. I believe they still do that but obviously due to deficits that is going to get difficult. It's sad when so many companies are dependent upon perl, but don…
And that's the flaw of the open source business model. You develop something for free, make it available to everyone for free, allow them to modify use and misuse as they wish. Every single step is your conscious decision. And then, you beg for donations, and complain that people are not donating? Doesn't make sense. If you don't want to work for free, just charge for it.
Yeah, I've never thought it compulsory to reimburse for any open source software. Some projects are "lucky" enough to have large corporate contributors/stewards, and others are projects of passion.
Maintenance activities (bug reports, feature additions, participation in community discussions, etc.) should be considered a form of "paying" for OSS - you're giving back and improving the ecosystem. I've done plenty of that for various projects; it's something that I enjoy doing.
Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of my coworkers above age 45 still use Perl. I am constantly parsing reports and then generating commands to run from that. I learned Perl in the 90's and it still works great for that. I have to code in Tcl for most of our EDA tools (chip design) but I still parse reports in Perl. The younger engineers use Python and I've learned enough but I really don't care. I'm not writing big systems or anything in Perl or…
I was about to say, Hey, I use Perl, but then I saw this posting with the over 45 qualification. Yep, that's me (way over). Honestly, I write about a script a quarter in Perl, but it definitely is handy now and then.
Curious: do you also do script-writing in other languages? And just pull out perl for a subset of problems? Or are most things at the "bigger than a script" level for you?
I'm not here to judge. I still prefer to write my python scripts like it's the 2.7 days... (more effort goes to python "code")
Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation
#39Craigslist used to donate over $100,000 every single year. Not sure when that stopped. That is really what kept perl going between the years of 2010 and 2016 or so. The board was actually paying a couple of people to do maintenance on the core repository and code. I believe they still do that but obviously due to deficits that is going to get difficult. It's sad when so many companies are dependent upon perl, but don…
Gifts don’t require repayment. Releasing free software is a gift to the world. Corporations don’t owe free software maintainers a cent, because people using your software doesn’t cost you anything.
Re: DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation
#40I always forget that DDG is written with Perl, even after I emailed yegg a million years ago asking why they used Perl, and he responded back, which was nice of him.
I hear Raku is fun, I haven't used it, but I sort of swore a soft oath that I would never touch Perl again about a decade ago after having to debug some regex magic someone did. I'm assuming that once you get past the "hump", Perl becomes fun?