Then run it with Ponie or your existing Perl 5 compiler, or add package main; at the start if you change your hash-bang line to/usr/bin/perl6 instead of/usr/bin/perl.
The point of the check is to re-use modules, not standalone scripts, so that you can migrate your code to Perl 6 gradually.
Fewer keystrokes should not be a design goal of a language.
Your objection is silly and I think it's because you focused on variable names at the expense of what Perl really tries to optimize, Huffman-wisee. The driving question of Perl (and especially Perl 6) design here is "Why should common operations require a lot of syntax?" In English, why should words such as "he", "she", "I", "you", and "it" be short instead of long? Why is say a better keyword to print a string with a newline attached than print_with_newline?
One answer is to let meaningful identifiers stand out more.
Granted, there are tradeoffs. I've seen the Sieve of Eratosthenes in APL and it's fairly dense -- but somehow good people get by with learning a little bit of notation. (The waterbed theory of complexity applies here too).
Python gives you the power and expressiveness of perl, but with actual design principles behind it.
Just because you don't understand how Perl applies its design principles does not mean that they do not exist. (You used a pronoun correctly in English, so you already know at least one of them in another context.)
Pugs really hasn't implemented the whole language, but it's possible to write useful, practical, usable Perl 6 programs with it. (See Porting Test::Builder to Pugs, an article I just wrote about my experience doing so.)
I think I'm pretty good at Perl 5, but Perl 6 is amazingly nicer.
I work for O'Reilly, covering free and open source software.
To my knowledge, there is no company policy, stated or unstated, opposed to the idea or practice of free software.
I chose to run this interview. It was my decision alone. Whether I or my employer agree with the opinions of the interviewer or the interviewee is irrelevant to that choice; I chose to run it because it brought up interesting questions worth considering.
O'Reilly is no enemy of free software. We use it heavily, promote it, and help to sponsor some projects, donating time, resources, and code. (We recently made part of the third edition of Programming Perl available to include as part of the core Perl documentation.)
You can believe me. You can also disbelieve me, in which case you either think that I am lying to you or deluded. You're welcome to believe what you want to believe, but I think the simplest explanation is that I'm telling the truth.
I'm not sure I follow your line of thought. Do you mean that MySQL AB has its business model from a legal point of view or a pragmatic one?
From a legal point of view, nothing in the GPL prevents any company from distributing GPLd software and charging for it, as long as the company follows the terms of the GPL, holds the copyright to the software, or has another agreement with the copyright holder. Because MySQL AB holds the copyright and requires all contributors to assign copyright over their contributions to MySQL AB, the company can distribute MySQL under any arrangement that it likes.
From a practical point of view, I agree in part. That's not the only source of potential revenue, though. If your company wants to use MySQL in a product (creating a derivative work, in copyright terms) but doesn't want to do so under the GPL, MySQL AB can license the code to you for a fee.
Next question is; if I GPLed my framework, would I, Mr. Original Author Jr., be legally bound to GPL everything I built on top of it, or could I silently exempt myself from my own licensing without legal reprocussions?
If you hold the copyright on a piece of work, the license does not apply to you.
This may have implications on receiving code contributions from other people, however. Consider the ability of MySQL AB to offer a commercial license of MySQL as well as a GPLd version because of requiring copyright assignment versus the practical impossibility of Linus ever changing the license of the Linux kernel.
I haven't looked that closely at it; but doesn't the GPL v2 give you the option of using it or any future version?
Which you do you mean? Some authors use the clause that allows redistributors of the software to redistribute it under the GPL v2 or any later version of their choice. Some authors do not. The FSF recommends using that clause, but it's not an automatic part of the GPL.
I don't speak for ESR and won't speculate as to his motives.
I will speak for myself, though. I decided to publish this article because I found it interesting and thought it would start some conversations. Federico was at the conference in Brazil, heard ESR speak, and asked if an interview along these lines would be interesting. Federico also interviewed RMS last December in Freedom, Innovation, and Convenience, also on the O'Reilly Network, also on a site I edit.
You are certainly welcome to believe that there's a sinister plot (of which I am unaware), but I think your theory is completely nutty both in premises and conclusion.
We didn't cover hacks like that because they affect other people. If you want to change the rules of the game for yourself, that's fine. We drew a line about hacks that might harm the game experience for other people.
You evaluate software based on two lists posted on a web site? If the author had started the PostgreSQL gotchas page first (the one prominently marked "still under progress"), would you post the same comment with the database names reversed?
Slashdot Mirror
Then run it with Ponie or your existing Perl 5 compiler, or add package main; at the start if you change your hash-bang line to /usr/bin/perl6 instead of /usr/bin/perl.
The point of the check is to re-use modules, not standalone scripts, so that you can migrate your code to Perl 6 gradually.
Your objection is silly and I think it's because you focused on variable names at the expense of what Perl really tries to optimize, Huffman-wisee. The driving question of Perl (and especially Perl 6) design here is "Why should common operations require a lot of syntax?" In English, why should words such as "he", "she", "I", "you", and "it" be short instead of long? Why is say a better keyword to print a string with a newline attached than print_with_newline?
One answer is to let meaningful identifiers stand out more.
Granted, there are tradeoffs. I've seen the Sieve of Eratosthenes in APL and it's fairly dense -- but somehow good people get by with learning a little bit of notation. (The waterbed theory of complexity applies here too).
Just because you don't understand how Perl applies its design principles does not mean that they do not exist. (You used a pronoun correctly in English, so you already know at least one of them in another context.)
It's Perl 6 code, of course. package marks code as Perl 5. Everything else is Perl 6.
Pugs really hasn't implemented the whole language, but it's possible to write useful, practical, usable Perl 6 programs with it. (See Porting Test::Builder to Pugs, an article I just wrote about my experience doing so.)
I think I'm pretty good at Perl 5, but Perl 6 is amazingly nicer.
If you were less patronizing, you perhaps could believe that some of us have a lot of experience with the alternatives.
Try writing Perl 6 code. Try porting Perl 5 code to Perl 6. I did. You can read about it tomorrow afternoon on Perl.com.
... or back up your vague assertions with anything more solid than "because I said so".
There probably won't be a new Camel for Perl 5.
Perhaps you'll like Perl Best Practices then.
Let me be more clear then.
You can believe me. You can also disbelieve me, in which case you either think that I am lying to you or deluded. You're welcome to believe what you want to believe, but I think the simplest explanation is that I'm telling the truth.
I'm not sure I follow your line of thought. Do you mean that MySQL AB has its business model from a legal point of view or a pragmatic one?
From a legal point of view, nothing in the GPL prevents any company from distributing GPLd software and charging for it, as long as the company follows the terms of the GPL, holds the copyright to the software, or has another agreement with the copyright holder. Because MySQL AB holds the copyright and requires all contributors to assign copyright over their contributions to MySQL AB, the company can distribute MySQL under any arrangement that it likes.
From a practical point of view, I agree in part. That's not the only source of potential revenue, though. If your company wants to use MySQL in a product (creating a derivative work, in copyright terms) but doesn't want to do so under the GPL, MySQL AB can license the code to you for a fee.
If you hold the copyright on a piece of work, the license does not apply to you.
This may have implications on receiving code contributions from other people, however. Consider the ability of MySQL AB to offer a commercial license of MySQL as well as a GPLd version because of requiring copyright assignment versus the practical impossibility of Linus ever changing the license of the Linux kernel.
Which you do you mean? Some authors use the clause that allows redistributors of the software to redistribute it under the GPL v2 or any later version of their choice. Some authors do not. The FSF recommends using that clause, but it's not an automatic part of the GPL.
I don't speak for ESR and won't speculate as to his motives.
I will speak for myself, though. I decided to publish this article because I found it interesting and thought it would start some conversations. Federico was at the conference in Brazil, heard ESR speak, and asked if an interview along these lines would be interesting. Federico also interviewed RMS last December in Freedom, Innovation, and Convenience, also on the O'Reilly Network, also on a site I edit.
You are certainly welcome to believe that there's a sinister plot (of which I am unaware), but I think your theory is completely nutty both in premises and conclusion.
Care to back up that assertion?
Yeah, but minus a style point for misspelling it. (A false pig?)
Mega-corporations including the Apache Software Foundation, the Perl Foundation, the Python Foundation, Gaim, Samba, FreeBSD, NetBSD....
Well yeah... sorta.
Maybe it's Microtek that's not ready for your desktop.
Please send me links to those forums.
We didn't cover hacks like that because they affect other people. If you want to change the rules of the game for yourself, that's fine. We drew a line about hacks that might harm the game experience for other people.
(I edited this book.)
They don't appear for most of a A Canticle for Leibowitz either, but any definition of science fiction that excludes that book has serious flaws.
That was MJD's POD is not Literate Programming.
You evaluate software based on two lists posted on a web site? If the author had started the PostgreSQL gotchas page first (the one prominently marked "still under progress"), would you post the same comment with the database names reversed?