Craigslist Donates $100,000 To the Perl Foundation

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Craigslist Donates $100,000 To the Perl Foundation

Posted by samzenpus on Friday February 3, 2012 @01:08AM from the have-a-few-bucks dept.

mikejuk writes "The craigslist Charitable Fund has donated $100,000 to the Perl community for Perl5 maintenance and general use by the Perl Foundation. Craigslist gets more than 30 billion views per month and it is mostly written in Perl. The entire architecture of the system is open source — a proxy array based on Perl and memcache and a backend provided by Apache, memcache, MySQL and, of course, Perl. This is a successful enterprise giving something back to open source — which is how it should be."

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Good on them by zakkie · 2012-02-03 01:13 · Score: 5, Interesting

Nice from the Craigslist folks. Aren't they eBay-owned though? Anyway, good to see perl getting some loving for a change.
1. Re:Good on them by awwaiid · 2012-02-03 01:17 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I think ebay has backed them financially (like own 25% of Craigslist), but otherwise have nothing to do with them. I suspect yahoo has plenty of Per and certainly lots of other tech, maybe they should match the donation :)
2. Re:Good on them by awwaiid · 2012-02-03 01:20 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Er... s/yahoo/ebay/ ; s/Per/Perl/. Stupid pre-caffeination-time aka mornings.
3. Re:Good on them by SJHillman · 2012-02-03 01:22 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  In 2004, eBay bought a 25% share of Craigslist and is one of three major board members. Newmark is believed to own the largest share.
  In 2008, eBay sued Craigslist for "diluting its financial investment" - Craigslist countersued a month later.
  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist#Financials_and_ownership
  As far as I'm concerned, Craigslist is doing everything right compared to eBay. Site is simple, fast and easy to use. Craigslist doesn't try to take a cut from the little guy. They have enough oversight to keep it from becoming spammy and to avoid legal hassles, but otherwise leaves it up to the Users.
  Is the Craigslist Charitable Fund that donated to the Perl Foundation the same as the Craigslist Foundation?
4. Re:Good on them by rudy_wayne · 2012-02-03 01:29 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7399720.stm
  "EBay acquired a 28.4% stake when it bought shares from a former employee who had been given equity by Mr Newmark.
  A year after the deal was completed, eBay, which had said it wanted to learn from Craigslist, started Kijiji.com, a rival international network of classified ad sites that now sells ads in all 50 US states. "
5. Re:Good on them by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 01:30 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  While I do like Craigslist, I don't agree with their policy of using and donating money to a hideous language created by a delusional religious zealot.
  Let's hope that Larry Wall's hideous monstrosity dies with him.
6. Re:Good on them by drinkypoo · 2012-02-03 01:32 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  As far as I'm concerned, Craigslist is doing everything right compared to eBay. Site is simple, fast and easy to use. Craigslist doesn't try to take a cut from the little guy. They have enough oversight to keep it from becoming spammy and to avoid legal hassles, but otherwise leaves it up to the Users.
  I agree with everything you said except for easy to use. It's technically true, but only because it doesn't do anything. There's no distance search, in fact, it is actively discouraged by carving the site up into small pieces and then disallowing scrapers, which exist anyway because they are an absolute necessity.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
7. Re:Good on them by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 01:37 · Score: 0, Insightful
  
  absolute necessity? Some of us know how to read a fucking map, know where we live and work, and seem to do just fine using craigslist.
8. Re:Good on them by Stewie241 · 2012-02-03 02:44 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  But you missed the point. The idea is the ability to search through all the classified listings for items that are within 25 kilometres from my location. I don't want to have to look through 300 listings to find those items - I want search to work.
  This probably isn't as necessary in smaller centres, but where I live, there is a wall of city for 100km. Craigslist breaks this up into small segments and you browse those segments.
  Kijiji on the other hand, lets me pick a precise location and filter out ads that are inside a certain radius of it. This, IMO, is much friendlier to people in larger centres.
9. Re:Good on them by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 03:28 · Score: 1
  
  I understand Craigslist will also be donating $250,00 to the Navajo Language Foundation soon.
10. Re:Good on them by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 03:28 · Score: 1
  
  Your comment is unnecessarily abrasive, and relies on a strawman argument. All folks who have a grievance with Craigslist search MUST be suffering from map problems? Really? I say you're trolling, because no one could willfully be so ignorant.
  I happen to live in an area that straddles two state borders. One of the states is large with multiple "markets" (zones) in the state. To find something that's only within driving distance, I have to make FOUR searches. For each state, that is one search per nearest market/zone. Not only can you not search Craigslist across state lines, but within a state to multiple market zones: it's one zone, or the entire state.
  CL blocks third party sites who try to fix their search. Instead of being spurred to fixing search or release a search API, Craigslist response has been to block ALL these third party sites - except Google. Google doesn't have a Craigslist interface per say, but if you are patient and very good with Google saved searches you can defeat CL's artificial limitations on productive searching.
11. Re:Good on them by cadu · 2012-02-03 03:43 · Score: 1
  
  .... and what a "change" !
12. Re:Good on them by nolife · 2012-02-03 04:08 · Score: 1
  
  Add search terms by town/city. That should be close enough to using miles for most people.
  xbox town1|town2|town3|town4
  or just the area names themselves if you are not looking for a specific item
  town1|town2|town3
  I use this search method all of the time. Including an RSS link.
  http://www.craigslist.org/about/help/search
  The only way you would ever be able to search my miles is if sellers had to put their entire address in their ad. That's not a good idea at all.
  
  --
  Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
13. Re:Good on them by Stewie241 · 2012-02-03 04:13 · Score: 1
  
  But one side of a particular town might be doable and another side might not. Not just because of size but because of traffic.
14. Re:Good on them by drinkypoo · 2012-02-03 04:14 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  There's another problem for people who live in bumfuck nowhere, which is my situation. Everything is far away from everything so I might as well look at ads in neighboring counties, and I'm going to have to if I want a reasonable chance of finding anything interesting. Now I have to visit various craigslists and manually repeat my searches again and again, or use one of the tools which are against the ToS. I understand that the stated intent is to encourage people to buy and sell in their area, but they really need to understand that doesn't make sense in all cases and make allowances for it. Besides, if I can't find it as near me as possible on CL I may well just end up buying something from much further away than necessary anyway, and what purpose does that serve?
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
15. Re:Good on them by drinkypoo · 2012-02-03 04:16 · Score: 1
  
  The only way you would ever be able to search my miles is if sellers had to put their entire address in their ad. That's not a good idea at all.
  That's not true. They provide as much of the address as they want, and the quality of the match can be indicated to the user.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
16. Re:Good on them by nolife · 2012-02-03 04:28 · Score: 1
  
  Without a destination address, you can't search for a specific distance, what is not true about that?
  I agree that any search can only give results IF people provide that information. That was what I thought I was saying.
  
  --
  Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
17. Re:Good on them by Grishnakh · 2012-02-03 05:39 · Score: 1
  
  Holy crap, tools like searchtempest.com are against the ToS? That's pretty stupid. Without those, it's pretty unbearable to use Craigslist at all if you're looking for something within a large area or within an area that's covered by multiple CL sites. What if I'm looking for some big industrial tool that's hard to find, and I want to look all over the entire southwest USA? Doing that by going to each site individually would take forever. That's just stupid.
18. Re:Good on them by Grishnakh · 2012-02-03 05:43 · Score: 1
  
  I agree with your sentiments, but searchtempest.com seems to be working fine for me at the moment; I was able to do a quick search of all CL sites within 500 miles of my zipcode, and it even lets me select whether I want the applicable sites in Mexico or not (definitely not!), and gives me 4 pages of results. Of course, it's still a little clumsy at it's basically showing a list of smaller windows, each with the results of a CL search contained within, but it's a lot easier than manually figuring out which CL sites are within that radius and searching each one by hand.
19. Re:Good on them by X0563511 · 2012-02-03 06:19 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think they would go after you for such a thing - only if you were being abusive in another way. This would give them some ammo to flip the switch on you.
  
  --
  For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
20. Re:Good on them by Grishnakh · 2012-02-03 06:34 · Score: 1
  
  Well, they can't "go after" you anyway, no matter what you do, unless it's illegal. Violating ToS of some private website, last time I checked, is not illegal. If they don't like you, they can try to ban your IP address, but good luck with that in this age of DHCP.
21. Re:Good on them by ynp7 · 2012-02-03 07:08 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps Craigslist isn't the right site for you? Or perhaps you'd prefer living in an urban center like a reasonable human being. Your argument is that scissors aren't useful because you don't need to cut anything. This is absurd.
22. Re:Good on them by X0563511 · 2012-02-03 07:28 · Score: 1
  
  If they don't like you, they can try to ban your IP address
  Which is exactly what I meant. Nowhere did I say anything about legalities.
  
  --
  For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
23. Re:Good on them by Grishnakh · 2012-02-03 07:39 · Score: 1
  
  Well, you said "go after" which sounds like invoking legalities, as as I said before, banning IPs is pretty much impossible, at least if you're trying to ban individual users rather than an aggregating site. If they tried to ban me, they'd just end up banning half the high-speed internet users in Phoenix most likely. Banning a fixed IP from an aggregating site like searchtempest.com, however, is certainly feasible, but they don't seem to have done that yet (I just tried it out after reading this article).
24. Re:Good on them by drinkypoo · 2012-02-03 11:09 · Score: 1
  
  My argument, since you seem to be too thick to comprehend it, is that craigslist intentionally puts barriers (like the ToS) in the way of meaningful use of their site. This doesn't make it useless, but it is a bit inexplicable. In any case, most of the stuff on craigslist isn't also posted elsewhere, which is what's wrong with it; it takes listings away from more capable, functional sites.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
25. Re:Good on them by SJHillman · 2012-02-03 13:29 · Score: 1
  
  If everybody lives in urban centers, where do you propose we get food, lumber and other natural products from? Unfortunately, our robot overlords aren't up to the task of completely taking over every rural industry just yet. And I say this as someone that has moved from bumfuck nowhere to a city for work. Moron.
26. Re:Good on them by ynp7 · 2012-02-04 10:16 · Score: 1
  
  So you're a farmer and a lumberjack? Didn't think so. Fuck off.
27. Re:Good on them by SJHillman · 2012-02-04 10:54 · Score: 1
  
  I've grown food and sold it. Does that qualify as a farmer? You decide. Even if I'm not still in a rural area, some people need to be to grow food, etc. Fuckwad.
Kudos to Craigslist by opentunings · 2012-02-03 01:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

And how many other companies making extensive use of Perl will pony up?
1. Re:Kudos to Craigslist by gmuslera · 2012-02-03 01:32 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Contributing code, modules, fixes, and error reporting? There are a lot that probably does that, and is not a minor thing.
2. Re:Kudos to Craigslist by John+Bokma · 2012-02-03 03:06 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Yeah, that's my excuse, as a freelance Perl programmer. Still, each time I check Fund Drive Details I cry a little. Is that all some of the companies that nearly run on Perl can do? The last time this amount was donated, if I recall correctly, was a few years (!) ago by a Dutch company (not 100% sure if it was Dutch).
  Anyway, a big thanks to Craigslist. But there are plenty of companies out there that could follow. If you donate over 5K you get a nice mention on the Sponsors page. Peanuts for some, I would say.
  
  --
  
  Perl Programmer for hire
3. Re:Kudos to Craigslist by opentunings · 2012-02-03 03:08 · Score: 1
  
  You're absolutely right. The volunteers doing coding and testing, and the staff at the Perl Foundation, are doing great things. But volunteers don't (usually) pay for office or rack space.
  The past two years I've personally sent the Perl Foundation a check. Last year I used my company's matching funds to double my contribution.
  Just sayin'.
4. Re:Kudos to Craigslist by Fnord · 2012-02-03 06:55 · Score: 1
  
  Its been 6 years since I worked there and I haven't kept up with them, but at the time Amazon employed some core developers of Perl and some of the major libraries (I believe they paid people to work on Mason). My knowledge is very out of date however, and they may not even be as big a Perl shop as they used to be.
They make that much $? by netwarerip · 2012-02-03 01:20 · Score: 2

Nice to see that they make enough $ to make a donation like that, without the standard income generating popups that most websites use. Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
1. Re:They make that much $? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 01:23 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Nice to see that they make enough $ to make a donation like that, without the standard income generating popups that most websites use. Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
  Craigslist is It! when you need that hook... - I mean temporary companion for that date to that important event you got stood up for at the last minute.
2. Re:They make that much $? by betterunixthanunix · 2012-02-03 01:35 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  They provide an actual, useful service. Why should we be surprised that they turn a profit without resorting to invasive, annoying advertisements?
  
  --
  Palm trees and 8
3. Re:They make that much $? by Patch86 · 2012-02-03 04:43 · Score: 1
  
  I wish they provided it to me. I live in a big town in the UK, relatively far from any other big towns (relative by UK standards, that is), and there's no local site. I can pick any of about 4 sites centred between 30 and 40 miles away; just no good for me, for a "local ads" site.
  You could let them off by saying "you live somewhere small, and they're mostly USA" etc., but it's a symptom of their odd site design. Rather than just giving every add a "location" value, and letting you search by "miles from my location" (which is how other ads sites I've used work), they insist on having no location data except for pre-set areas. That choice makes it unusable for me...
4. Re:They make that much $? by datavirtue · 2012-02-03 18:06 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, you can buy drug addicted females to exploit but you can't buy ammo, or facilitate the exchange of firearms on a person-to-person basis, no no no, that is baaaad.
  
  --
  I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Great! by Dogun · 2012-02-03 01:24 · Score: 1, Insightful

Great! Now maybe the perl folks can afford to fix their epic memory leaks that have been their bug list for the better part of a decade.
1. Re:Great! by hlub · 2012-02-03 01:44 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Epic leaks? For the better part of a decade?
2. Re:Great! by Dogun · 2012-02-03 01:52 · Score: 1
  
  Ever used ithreads? Ever?
3. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 01:59 · Score: 1
  
  Epic leaks? For the better part of a decade?
  better part of a decade - 8 years
  22121 memory leaking in perl_destruct and perl_free ? open perl5 Nobody 0
  Haili.Ma@netiq.com 8 years ago 8 years ago 0
  
  Not sure on the legitimacy of the actual leak or the value of its epicness but it appears that 8 years is the better part of a decade. So yes, for the better part of a decade.
4. Re:Great! by close_wait · 2012-02-03 02:21 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Its not a leak, Someone has already commented in the ticket that if you repeatedly create and destroy perl interpeters, then you need to set PL_destruct_level, because otherwise, (for efficiency), perl doesn't completely free the old interpreter, on the asumption that you're about to call exit(). So, it's just that no one got round to marking the ticket as rejected.
5. Re:Great! by preaction · 2012-02-03 05:08 · Score: 2
  
  Ever used ithreads? Ever?
  No, and neither should you when POE, Reflex, AnyEvent, Coro, and fork() exist.
6. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 05:22 · Score: 0
  
  Sure, even wrote an IDE on top of it.
  http://padre.perlide.org/
Not so altrusitic... by bazmail · 2012-02-03 01:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

This is an investment in whats keeps them alive.
1. Re:Not so altrusitic... by Stewie241 · 2012-02-03 02:53 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Sure, but IMO the point of open source software isn't necessarily altruism. The idea is voluntarily contributing to necessary software infrastructure.
  I like to ponder sometimes what would happen if businesses stopped purchasing MS Office licenses and instead donated 10% of the cost of an MS Office license to a development fund for an open source office package. Or the same thing with Windows, or Autocad, or pick any number of software packages. I would like to think that with 10% of the revenue you could create some fairly impressive software (and yes I am aware of many reasons why practical implementation would be difficult).
2. Re:Not so altrusitic... by glwtta · 2012-02-03 03:09 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  It's called 'enlightened self-interest', a much better position than altruism.
  
  --
  sic transit gloria mundi
3. Re:Not so altrusitic... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 03:12 · Score: 0
  
  I'm pretty sure Perl would've managed to survive even without their donation.
4. Re:Not so altrusitic... by im_thatoneguy · 2012-02-03 22:01 · Score: 1
  
  It's a pretty sad investment then. They're a multi-billion dollar company... one person's salary isn't exactly a huge "thank you" gift to the software you've built upon.
Hey ! by dargaud · 2012-02-03 01:32 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Hey, I had to use suffer using perl for a year ! Can I get 2$ for a beer too ?
Sorry, I'm not very good at trolling...

--
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Trolling Perl by betterunixthanunix · 2012-02-03 01:33 · Score: -1, Offtopic
1. Call it PERL
2. Say that you prefer sed and awk
3. http://www.jeffreykegler.com/Home/perl-and-undecidability
--
Palm trees and 8
1. Re:Trolling Perl by dargaud · 2012-02-03 02:39 · Score: 1
  
  These articles will avoid mathematical notation in favor of Perl 5.
  I'm not so sure it's an improvement... but thanks, it's an interesting article. I'm parsing it right now.
  
  --
  Non-Linux Penguins ?
Successful ? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 01:48 · Score: -1

Craigslist is the absolute worst way to advertise items for sale, and is full of phony ads
and spam.
If the current state of Craigslist constitutes "success", I'd like to see how failure is
defined.
Craigslist is "free", but it is not free in reality, because the user experience is so very
awful. When you advertise something for sale, you get spam, scams, idiots who have no
money to actually buy the item, etc. It's like eating a meal in the comfortable surroundings
of a public toilet in Newark NJ.
In other words Craigslist sucks.
I don't know what Buckmaster or Newmark do with their time, but it is obvious they don't care
how awful Craigslist really is, and they are just sitting back on their fat asses letting incomptetent
programmers run the show.
1. Re:Successful ? by malilo · 2012-02-03 01:57 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Troll much? You can always tell a made-up complaint because it describes a situation nothing like reality, and has a tone of venomous contempt that is excessive given the situation. People with no money to buy the item? Ok, maybe some people low-ball you but I have found that is easily curtailed by stating. "SERIOUSLY NO LOW-BALL OFFERS PRICE FIRM" on the ad. As for scams I get about 5% spam response rate on most things. They are super-obvious. Guess what. I click delete. I also get several offer emails usually and can only sell to one person! OMG, the horrors of selling something for free.
  
  --
  "sometimes he felt that his whole life was a dream, and he wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
2. Re:Successful ? by CycleMan · 2012-02-03 05:28 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry it doesn't work for you. I've found multiple places to live on Craigslist. I've bought things, sold things, and given away things for free. It's a classifieds section, not an AppStore, and Craigslist works very well for me on those terms.
Is PERL still active by jellomizer · 2012-02-03 01:56 · Score: 3, Interesting

Ok full disclosure, I never really cared for PERL, I was always more of a Python fan myself.
But has there really been that much real effort in the PERL community? In its hay days during the Late 90's and Early 2000's there was a lot of PERL Development, but it seems it has dropped off and PERL lost its shine. I am asking because I am more of a Python Fan and I haven't been really involved in PERL apps. But back in the day every time you tried to find an open source program to do something it required PERL... Not so much of this any more, is it because I have changed how I look for software or is it because PERL is no longer as popular as it was before.

--
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
1. Re:Is PERL still active by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 01:59 · Score: 0
  
  I prefer Perl for many things. Glad to see it going strong.
2. Re:Is PERL still active by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 02:05 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  Perl is great as awk on steroids which was its original purpose.
  Not so great for the substrate for glue code because its syntax is so irregular.
  Terrible for writing standalone applications.
3. Re:Is PERL still active by ThePhilips · 2012-02-03 02:34 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  In its hay days during the Late 90's and Early 2000's there was a lot of PERL Development, but it seems it has dropped off and PERL lost its shine.
  
  Frankly, Perl got it all more or less right already in early 2000s. So obviously there is not much development happening: Perl already works pretty well. Most new releases have mostly bug fixes - but also some minor syntax improvements and features from the Perl6.
  IOW, Perl lost its shine only in the eyes of those who are after shiny. Perl is pretty down to earth tool to get the job done.
  
  But back in the day every time you tried to find an open source program to do something it required PERL
  
  Perl defines portability properly and allows one to access quite a lot of system-specific resources - in the system-specific way. Thus it was (and in some areas still is) quite popular as the language for install scripts of all sorts.
  Even now, Perl remains one of the few power tools to be most commonly included in the fresh UNIX system installs (including Debian and Mac OS X). There is no other language/tool which is as stable and as portable: that's why it is possible and useful to include it into the OS install.
  
  Not so much of this any more, is it because I have changed how I look for software or is it because PERL is no longer as popular as it was before.
  
  IMO, Perl greatest weakness is the interface to other libraries (the PerlXS). It is not an easy task to make a Perl binding. It's fscking hard and includes lots of copy-paste. That's why Perl lacks many up-to-date bindings to many up-to-date libraries, what makes it not so suitable for many up-to-date tasks. Even Perl6 went on and pretty much excluded the XS/etc from the spec. What sucks and makes Perl6 worse (and useless to me) than the Perl5, because on top of general problem with bindings, Perl6 adds fragmentation: extensions written for different Perl6 implementation are incompatible with each other.
  
  --
  All hope abandon ye who enter here.
4. Re:Is PERL still active by oneandoneis2 · 2012-02-03 02:35 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Perl is *massively* active. The main "problem" with Perl is, unlike, say, PHP, you don't see it in action: A website that makes heavy use of PHP will have lots of .php files in its URLs. A website that runs on Perl will just use good old .html.
  If you're looking for Perl by checking for "cgi-bin" then you're a long way out of date with where Perl is these days
  
  --
  So.. it has come to this
5. Re:Is PERL still active by Sez+Zero · 2012-02-03 03:04 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Even on scales of visibility Perl is still in the top 10 and pretty much stays about there for as long as I've checked the Tiobe Index.
  Perl is like a shovel. There may be fancy post hole drills pneumatic jackhammers out there that get all the page views at Home Depot. But there will always be the shovel; because it gets the job done simply and have more uses than you think.
6. Re:Is PERL still active by John+Bokma · 2012-02-03 03:10 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  FWIW: Perl is the language, perl is a program that can run Perl. Case matters, and hence PERL is to me yelling.
  And yes Perl is alive and kicking, I make a living with it.
  As for lost its shine? You mean not everybody who "learned to code over the weekend" has moved to PHP or similar? I am glad for that.
  
  --
  
  Perl Programmer for hire
7. Re:Is PERL still active by RDW · 2012-02-03 03:49 · Score: 1
  
  But has there really been that much real effort in the PERL community?
  Yes:
  http://www.modernperlbooks.com/
  http://perl-begin.org/tutorials/modern-perl/
8. Re:Is PERL still active by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 04:14 · Score: 0
  
  1. It's Perl, not PERL.
  2. It's heyday, not hay day.
9. Re:Is PERL still active by preaction · 2012-02-03 05:11 · Score: 1
  
  IMO, Perl greatest weakness is the interface to other libraries (the PerlXS). It is not an easy task to make a Perl binding. It's fscking hard and includes lots of copy-paste. That's why Perl lacks many up-to-date bindings to many up-to-date libraries, what makes it not so suitable for many up-to-date tasks.
  I've been looking for some things to do to improve my XS abilities, is there any specific libraries you'd like to see?
10. Re:Is PERL still active by ThePhilips · 2012-02-03 06:02 · Score: 2
  
  Up-to-date, portable and well documented Qt bindings.
  Place of portable GUI toolkit for Perl was always kind of empty. Many tried - but none remained maintained sufficiently long to become de facto standard. Most are abandoned. Few are managing to stay afloat, but sorely lack Perl-specific documentation. And I will not go with every little question to the mail lists.
  On many occasions, even Xaw-level toolkit would have been more than satisfactory - if portable. Even if primitive, there is nothing like that available.
  P.S. Many insisted that Perl/Tk works well. Indeed, applications written with it work well. Now go and try to find any documentation which isn't "but it's just like in Tcl/Tk!" and describes anything more complicated than a hello world exit button app. I have found couple of decent tutorials - only to realize 5 minutes later that I'm missing a decent reference. Because Perl isn't Tcl, lots of stuff really differs and doing it in Perl like in Tcl is very counter-productive. And there is no Perl specific reference documentation.
  P.P.S. But that in itself will not solve the problem that perlxs is a stinking pile of ****. I'd love Perl community to invest into a simpler, probably not so powerful interface.
  
  --
  All hope abandon ye who enter here.
11. Re:Is PERL still active by doom · 2012-02-03 09:41 · Score: 1
  
  You might mention that the 4th Edition of "Programming Perl" is due out this month: Programming Perl. Lately, Tom Christiansen and brian d foy have been doing quite a bit of work investigating perl's support for Unicode. I'm interested to see this book if only to see what they say about it.
12. Re:Is PERL still active by doom · 2012-02-03 09:51 · Score: 1
  
  A few years back, Tim Bunce did some talks about: Perl Myths. You might want to take a look at it... in summary: the idea that perl is "dead" (or inactive) is ridiculous by any objective measure: it's mentioned frequently in job ads, there's a lot of activity in CPAN module development, the perl5 developers are hard at work on getting new features working (and old features working better).
  In general, I would say that the perl culture continues to be active in stealing ideas from anywhere it can (including perl 6). You like Rails? Well here's Catalyst. You like Rack? Well here's Plack. You think perl objects need improvement? Try Moose. And so on...
13. Re:Is PERL still active by zmughal · 2012-02-03 15:29 · Score: 1
  
  For GUI, I've had a great experience using Tkx. That is just a lightweight wrapper around the Tcl interpreter and there are nice tutorials for it at TkDocs.
  For something to make bindings easier, there is work on a ctypes for Perl. And there's also the Inline namespace on CPAN, but that makes your code a bit difficult to distribute.
14. Re:Is PERL still active by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-05 05:13 · Score: 0
  
  Perl is great for any application, of any size, standalone or not.
  And its syntax, in the hands of a competent programmer, permits to write the most readable code, better than any other programming language.
15. Re:Is PERL still active by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-06 17:29 · Score: 0
  
  I guess that's why so many people keep using Perl to write standalone applications that together represent entire platforms, myself included. Maybe you should attend YAPC and talk to some people who are actually doing awesome stuff with Perl. Mod parent troll.
Too little and small-minded? by SplatMan_DK · 2012-02-03 02:09 · Score: 2

Considering the role Perl (and the other software products they use) has in their business, it seems like a very small sum of money.

Had they purchased commercial software from Oracle, IBM, Microsoft etc. to solve this task the price would have been a two-digit million-dollar figure. And probably a bunch of additional millions on top of that, for more iron to run it on.

We should praise them for this step, but at the same time be aware that they got away REALLY CHEAP by this action. Hell, the marketing buzz it generates is probably worth half that amount by itself!

- Jesper

--
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
1. Re:Too little and small-minded? by Sez+Zero · 2012-02-03 03:09 · Score: 1
  
  Considering the role Perl (and the other software products they use) has in their business, it seems like a very small sum of money. Had they purchased commercial software from Oracle, IBM, Microsoft etc. to solve this task the price would have been a two-digit million-dollar figure. And probably a bunch of additional millions on top of that, for more iron to run it on.
  So they're required to donate more because they are efficient?
  But using a project like Perl (as opposed to a commercial software product) means that contributions are more than just a monetary sum. Things like that have already been mentioned like contributing code, fixes, bug reports. I'll also throw in advocacy; they get good pub for themselves with the donation but also a strong example for The Perl Foundation for Perl in the enterprise.
2. Re:Too little and small-minded? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 04:02 · Score: 1
  
  That's a silly metric. I mean, do you buy your wife (hypothetical, of courer) a mink coat every month because of all the money you saved by not having to pay hookers, maids, and chefs?
3. Re:Too little and small-minded? by ReadParse · 2012-02-03 05:01 · Score: 1
  
  So how much should they have given, to make it enough to satisfy you and all the others who think that as long as they're paying less than they would have paid for the commercial alternative, they're getting off cheap?
4. Re:Too little and small-minded? by optymizer · 2012-02-03 06:46 · Score: 1
  
  there's the definition of judgmental for everyone to see.
5. Re:Too little and small-minded? by SplatMan_DK · 2012-02-03 12:04 · Score: 1
  
  I never said they should pay the same as they would have, had they used commercial software.
  
  I simply said they got away cheap, and that in the grand scheme of things 100K was a very small sum from a commercial perspective.
  
  But in case i had said anything like that - which I didn't - then I believe the answer would be: an amount equal to the value of the continued support they are getting plus 1/4 of the amount a commercial alternative would have charged for software maintenance.
  
  In reality probably between 8-12% of a commercial alternative. Per year.
  
  - Jesper
  
  --
  My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Fixes for Perl? by sgt+scrub · 2012-02-03 02:35 · Score: 0

Does this mean, "Beat up old computer geek seeking perky young beauty queen", will someday elicit the correct queen or is that not a Perl issue?

--
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
100K is not what it used to be by Mannfred · 2012-02-03 03:12 · Score: 1

Obviously 100K is much better than nothing, but it's difficult to see the odd 100K donation making much difference to a software project of the scale of perl. At the same time it's easy to demonstrate how much OS projects like perl are contributing to the economy. Perhaps after a few more SOPA-like victories the IT industry will feel empowered enough to lobby the government for some taxpayer money to support critical web infrastructure maintenance/development.
1. Re:100K is not what it used to be by Waffle+Iron · 2012-02-03 03:40 · Score: 1
  
  The government has already invested a lot of taxpayer money into developing a computer language: Ada. You could take advantage of that.
2. Re:100K is not what it used to be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 04:17 · Score: 0
  
  They're getting the development work and toolchain for free, so they don't necessarily need gobs of money to thrive. Some money for web hosting always helps. But if they were given a lot of money, chances are some would be wasted on stuff like PR agencies who'll keep in touch with the trade press with "latest news about Perl".
3. Re:100K is not what it used to be by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 05:48 · Score: 0
  
  Look up the Arianne rocket, and then realize that Ada was created to eliminate the very error it created.
  Ada sucks, and it's a disgrace to Ada Lovelace's legacy.
4. Re:100K is not what it used to be by Grishnakh · 2012-02-03 05:54 · Score: 1
  
  Ada would be useless for web development, and it isn't even used for any other kind of development outside of the defense sector.
wha??? by superwiz · 2012-02-03 04:16 · Score: 1

What do you mean a "successful enterprise"? Craigslist is not an enterprise. It's a charity. It charges no money for its services. Neither the posters nor the viewers pay. It displays no ads. It survives on donations. You may not think of the people it helps as being in need of charity, but the modus operandi of Craigslist is that of charity. So this is just one charity giving money to another charity.

--
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
1. Re:wha??? by rhizome · 2012-02-03 06:40 · Score: 1
  
  It charges no money for its services.
  It most certainly does charge for job and/or real estate ads in many cities.
  
  --
  When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
2. Re:wha??? by superwiz · 2012-02-04 08:21 · Score: 1
  
  Oh? News to me. I've advertised rentals there for free plenty of times (albeit not within the last year).
  
  --
  Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
3. Re:wha??? by emazep · 2012-02-05 05:52 · Score: 1
  
  What do you mean a "successful enterprise"? Craigslist is not an enterprise. It's a charity. It charges no money for its services. Neither the posters nor the viewers pay. [...] So this is just one charity giving money to another charity.
  Nope.
  
  Q: Is craigslist a nonprofit?
  A: No, craigslist was incorporated as a for-profit in 1999.
  
  Q: How does craigslist support its operations?
  A: Posting fees for jobs in 18 metro areas, brokered NYC apartments, and therapeutic services.
  
  Craigslist fact sheet
4. Re:wha??? by superwiz · 2012-02-05 06:56 · Score: 1
  
  I have posted rentals. I am in NYC area. I was never requested to pay a fee.
  
  --
  Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
5. Re:wha??? by emazep · 2012-02-06 05:44 · Score: 1
  
  I have posted rentals. I am in NYC area. I was never requested to pay a fee.
  Yes of course since, unless you're a broker, your rentals posts clearly don't fall into the (already mentioned) paid categories:
  Posting fees for jobs in 18 metro areas, brokered NYC apartments, and therapeutic services.
  Being from NYC, you shouldn't have any problem in understanding your language ;-)
  In case you're still not convinced, here is an article which explains how (and how much) Craigslist makes (big) money out of its site:
  Craigslist Rakes It In
  And it only deals with apartment brokers.
Open source CL? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-03 04:32 · Score: 0

Craigslist is open source? Anyone have a link to the source?
bravo but... by w.hamra1987 · 2012-02-03 05:39 · Score: 1

well done craigslist. they are giving back to the community, as everyone should do, in a way or other. thank you craigslist (:
the only crticism here... is perl itself. i wish it was some community better than that kludge

--
my sig pwns your sig
Perl 7 by eminencja · 2012-02-03 06:54 · Score: 2

Perl is where JavaScript used to be at version 1.3 -- version 1.4 was on the horizon, it was supposed to change the language radically, add packages, type system, etc. However, 1.4 was killed and 1.5 was born. 1.5 was a small incremental update to 1.3.
Perl 6 is never going to make it (yes, I've looked at it recently) so the community should let it die and start Perl 7 instead. Perl 7 should be for Perl 5 what JavaScript 1.5 was for JavaScript 1.3. It should add 1) classes using MooseX::declare syntax 2) autoboxing @arr.push( $elem ) instead push @arr, $elem and 3) and maybe a few syntactic enhancements that everybody is going to love such like chained comparisons or while @arr -> $x, $y
We know (thanks to CPAN modules) that those work.
1. Re:Perl 7 by doom · 2012-02-03 09:58 · Score: 1
  
  Perl 6 is never going to make it (yes, I've looked at it recently)
  
  It's understandable why you'd feel that way-- and I think even chromatic is getting exasperated with the project at this point-- but it's worth remembering that "never" is a long time. Open source projects are different from the usual proprietary ones... consider that there was a time when many people had given up on mozilla...
2. Re:Perl 7 by eminencja · 2012-02-03 12:39 · Score: 1
  
  This is not only about Perl 6 implementations (which are slow and can use hundreds of megabytes of memory for the most innocent tasks) but also about the spec. Perl has had a reputation for allowing you to write code so concise that it is unreadable. For Perl 6 -- I don't know -- saying my Int $a is both ugly and more verbose than, say, C. The same goes for sub s ( Int $a is copy ) (if you don't say is copy, it's passed by reference).
  Splicing rules were supposed to be simpler but they look more confusing to me. Parenthesis in sub calls are still optional (a common source of confusion in Perl5, where a comma may separate either function arguments or statements) but there is a new, alternative syntax for calling a sub using subname followed by a colon (which happens to look like a label).
  Parenthesis are now skipped in more places, say in array and hash declarations (so @arr = 1,2 ; @arr = (1,2); and [1,2] all mean different things). JavaScript got it right, Perl6 gets it wrong. Apparently there are good sides to designing a language in two weeks (that would be 10 working days) rather than 10 years.
  There is some very nice stuff in Perl 6 but my final verdict would be thumbs down - both for the implementation(s) and for the spec.
Who? by CurryCamel · 2012-02-03 08:17 · Score: 1

Should I know what is craiglist? Looking at craiglist.org reminds me of a moderately NSFW domain parikng page. "Women seeking men", etc. Complete with crappy translations and all. If I was running Windows, I'd be starting the virus checker right about now.
Has Google ever done so? by Bootsy+Collins · 2012-02-03 09:24 · Score: 1

This may be an ignorant question, but . . .I think of Google as perhaps the company that has most profited from free/open source software. I presume they make contributions through development channels (e.g. LKML); I don't participate in the development of anything Google cares much about, so I dunno whether they do, but I presume they do. But have they ever donated money to any free/open source software projects?
1. Re:Has Google ever done so? by oneandoneis2 · 2012-02-03 22:29 · Score: 1
  
  Last Perl conference I was at listed Google as one of the sponsors. So apparently, yes.
  
  --
  So.. it has come to this
Just waiting for the day... by bgibby9 · 2012-02-06 15:35 · Score: 1

when something I write generates the type of cash like that so I can make a financial contribution the best programming language ever devised q:)

--
http://www.gibby.net.au