The Status Of The Perl Journal

A number of people have been wondering what's going to happen to TPJ ^[?] in light of Earthweb's (the owner of TPJ) sale of most of its properties to Internet.com. Many rumours have been flying around and Jon Orwant has decided to clear things. I've put his status update below.

From Jon Orwant:

"January 2, 2001

Some folks have been asking me about the status of The Perl Journal #20, and prospective authors have been asking me about deadlines for future issues. The answers: TPJ #20 is in press and ready to print, but EarthWeb (the owner of TPJ) has told the printer to stop the presses until further notice. I am currently responding to proposals sent to me with approximately "I don't know if there's going to be another issue, but when I do I'll respond to your proposal."

Since the future of the magazine is in doubt, I can't in good conscience greenlight proposals; I will not encourage an author to spend weeks writing an article when I know that it might never be printed. So I've told people who've asked what I know about the current situation: while EarthWeb has sold many of its properties to internet.com so that it can focus on "career services", it has not sold TPJ. However, EarthWeb has also made it clear that they don't want to publish TPJ any more.

This story has started to leak out to the Perl community and has already mutated a bit in not-quite-correct directions, so I wanted to write this note to set the record straight. Or as straight as I can, given what little I know about EarthWeb's decisions.

While TPJ's future is very much up in the air, people shouldn't take this as any indicator about Perl itself. TPJ was doing just fine back when I ran it, there's no shortage of content out there, and the magazine could easily go bimonthly and then monthly -- indeed, when EarthWeb acquired TPJ I had thought that was the plan. I still enjoy the editing, the authors enjoy the writing, and the designers enjoy the designing. What happens now is up to EarthWeb. And no, I'm not suggesting that people bombard them with e-mail. Heck, they just laid off 100 people, so I'm not even sure who to bombard. Eventually there will be some resolution, and when there is I'll write again to let everyone know.

As of December 27th, this matter is now in the courts, and so I have to adopt the "just the facts" tone of this letter without portraying my opinions. Someday I'll be able to talk more about what is happening in these strange days; until then, you'll have to conjure up your own adjectives on my behalf.

Cheers,

Jon Orwant "

Comments

what about Slashdot?

[deander2]

i know this seems like an unlikely possibility, but why could this not happen to slashdot? what would be done about it? does taco have a gameplan if VA goes belly-up?

however remote this seems now, don't discount it. murphy's law.

Re:what about Slashdot?

[AMK]

Besides, most of the developers have already moved to K5.

I think Advogato is more of a developer hangout (thanks in large part to its wonderfully draconian trust metric), while K5 is more of a media/culture discussion area these days.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Tim?

[stevens]

I love TPJ.

It's in good editorial hands, and the community produces some great material for it. I think it's a great fit for the Perl community [such little as I've seen of it].

So, if EarthWeb doesn't want it, perhaps O'Reilly would like to break into periodical publishing. C'mon, Tim, you know you want to!

Re:Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Tim?

[StandardDeviant]

On the face of it, that idea might actually make a good bit of strategic sense for O'Reilly. Their perl line of books is very strong, and I've heard it's one of their more profitable "properties." Doesn't Larry Wall already work for them as well? If they could assimilate the editorial and production staff whole-cloth, this could work very smoothly (especially if #20 is ready to ship, a nice initial slug of income).

The downside is that periodicals publishing may not mesh real well with their business internally e.g. tax and regulatory stuff may be different in subtle ways from books (like, some states have more lenient tax structures and breaks for periodicals publishers, 3 of my 4 magazine subscriptions come from Colorado for example). I'm not in the publishing biz (my fiancee is, so what info I have is second hand), so take my random thoughts with a grain of NaCl.

--

oh no it's Byte all over again..

[Dr. Awktagon]

Damn it, not another fine magazine getting tossed around. Usually that's the first step before it's put to death. What's next, Dr. Dobbs? Linux Journal?

What happens to these magazines? Why can't the people and articles just get regrouped under another name or something? For some reason I thought Orwant actually had the rights to TPJ and such. What's with the court case?

Oh well, just venting. I could never understand why when people are willing to pay for a magazine (especially one like TPJ, they couldn't get THAT much from advertising) why the magazine can be killed.

And just like Byte, I get the news RIGHT AFTER renewing my subscription.

I hope TPJ is back in full effect (ON PAPER please, no TPJ.com for me) and this is all just publisher silliness.

Re:oh no it's Byte all over again..

[alangmead]

Although Byte had a large number of readers at the time CMP stopped publication, it was loosing advertisers. One could argue that it was loosing advertisers because of its editorial focus. It had articles about everything from software development, to chip design, to computer system and peripherals, to software applications reviews.And all in a relitivly OS neutral viewpoint. Developers of applications didn't want to advertise in a magazine about CPU design. OS vendors didn't want to advertise in a magazine reviewing hardware their product doesn't run under. CPU manufactures didn't want to advertise in a magazine discussing OOP.

There are a few web pages discussing the end of Byte magazine, including Tom Halfill's Tom's Unofficial BYTE FAQ: The Death of BYTE Magazine and Jerry Pournelle's The Byte Fiasco

Could this happen the TPJ too? Jon implies that the magazine was financially strong when he sold it to EarthWeb, but advertisers may have left in the past year. (Take a look at your average large web site, and see how many "house ads" are running.) I know there are some advertisers that want to target an audience who use perl, but is it enough. Take a look at other computer magazines, and see how many ads are there for compilers and libraries. Since the perl interpreter and CPAN are both free, it takes a big hit in those advertising sectors.

arghhh

[Alien54]

The cluelessness of pointy haired bosses and other corporate bean counter types never ceases to amaze me.

On the other hand, this is part of the problem when a good property is in the hands of someone who doesn't know what to do with it.

Internet.com would be an excellent place for TPJ. Unfotunately, it looks like Earthweb decided to canniablize the resource, fools that they are.

The EarthWeb press release is HERE

The essential information in part includes

"The Earthweb IT and Internet professional content assets that internet.com is acquiring are among the best properties available on the Web. They will be a great fit for us and we will be able to greatly leverage these properties in terms of readership and revenue opportunities. We also look forward to potentially establishing other strategic initiatives with dice.com in the coming year," stated internet.com Chairman and CEO Alan M. Meckler.

In addition to earthweb.com, the websites acquired by internet.com include:

Developer.com (www.developer.com), Datamation (www.datamation.com), CrossNodes (www.crossnodes.com),SysOpt.com (www.sysopt.com), ERP Hub (www.erphub.com), Open Source IT (www.opensourceit.com), Javascripts.com (www.javascripts.com), JARS.com (www.jars.com), HTML Goodies (www.htmlgoodies.com), Gamelan (www.gamelan.com), CodeGuru.com www.codeguru.com), Intranet Journal (www.intranetjournal.com), CIN (http://www.cin.earthweb.com/) and EarthWeb Direct (www.earthwebdirect.com).

So it looks like The Perl Journal is just being phased out despite being a highly valued professional resource.

of course, this is completely speculative on my part.

More Earthweb press releases located here including a real audio broadcast of the announcement, which might be interesting.

Nice

[Shoeboy]

TPJ's future is very much up in the air

Someday I'll be able to talk more about what is happening in these strange days; until then, you'll have to conjure up your own adjectives on my behalf.

Well that certainly answered all of my questions.
Thank god we got all that cleared up.
--Shoeboy

"The matter is in the courts", translated

[Bruce Perens]

This is of course speculation and won't be answered because of the fix he's in.

The matter is in the courts most likely means I sold an interest for stock, their stock is now worthless, by killing the issue they have devalued my own remaining interest, and they are keeping me from making money with my remaining interest. So, I took them to court.

The bottom line is that TPJ is an innocent bystander injured by a large train wreck.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:"The matter is in the courts", translated

[orwant]

That's not accurate, Bruce. I have never owned any stock in EarthWeb.

Jon Orwant

Re:"The matter is in the courts", translated

[Bruce Perens]

OK. Well, I won't push you any farther. Sorry.

ah, relax Re:Nice

[StandardDeviant]

He just went to the Alan Greenspan School Of Public Communications. ;^)

--

No TPJ - gutted

[jamieo]

I've subscribed to TPJ since issue #3 and it's been a wonderful resource over the years - not only have I learned a great deal from it, but it's given me lots of ideas for things to write and improve over the years.

I've only just got the last couple of issues since EarthWeb screwed up my subscription, and I've just resubscribed for a year. I don't care about loss of money, but loss of any future TPJs is very very sad.

Jamie

Re:It isn't all that great...

[jandrese]

Actually, you might be surprised. I was looking for documentation on how to use a specific Win32 COMM module, and TPJ was the only place on the web with useful documentation. I signed up on the spot.

Naturally I get this news shortly afterward. :(

Re:Perl and history repeating itself

[alangmead]

The BASIC your describing isn't the BASIC I was using in the '80s. Mine had stronly typed variables, record datatypes, separate compilation, and block conditional and loops. Digital did a good job with VAX BASIC. The BASIC you're describing were the variants designed to run on the 4KB microcomputers of the day, variants that make Kemeny and Kurtz cringe.

I think you're right in that Perl will evolve. Its intentionally derivative nature makes it easy to modify. It already has changed greatly between perl1 and perl5, and since work is already being done on perl 6, it seems to continue on its same path.

C'mon, Tim! We'll shell out $$$ for TPJ!!

[Plugh]

This is a rare case where a "Me, Too!" is in fact useful (I hope). Mr. O'Reilly, behold the truckloads of slashdotter Perl-lovers (er, like me) who are willing to queue up to pay money for The Perl Journal.

I Love TPJ. I Love Perl. Hell, I also loved all the Perl Conferences and most of the O'Reilly books (Perl or otherwise).

Please, fellow slashdotters -- join me in encouraging O'Reilly to Do The Right Thing.