Given the four fundamental cultures - Clan (Collaborate), Adhocracy (Create), Hierarchy (Control), Market (Compete) - the Competing Values Framework Intro (12:15) instructively noted how Apple's culture changed over the years:

• 1976: Jobs and Wozniak create the Apple-I and Apple-II. Adhocracy.
• 1981: IPM PC released. Apple-III fails.
• 1983: Development of Lisa and Macintosh. Adhocracy/Clan.
• 1985: Scully replaces Jobs as CEO. Hierarchy.
• 1997: Jobs returns. Hierarchy/Market.
• 2000s: Balanced culture: Hierarchy/Market/Adhocracy/Clan (it's common for companies to move to a more balanced culture as they mature).

Let's similarly speculate on how Perl culture changed during the years of the Perl timeline:

• 1987: Wall starts work on Perl while working at Unisys. Perl 1.0 released Dec 18 1987, Perl 2 in June 1988, Perl 3 Oct 1989. Adhocracy*.
• 1991: Perl 4 released Mar 1991. Pink Camel book documented it. Adhocracy/Market.
• 1993: Perl 4.036 released. Perl 4 development ends.
• 1994: P5P formed as the primary forum for development, maintenance, and porting of Perl 5. Adhocracy/Clan.
• 1994: Perl 5 released.
• 1998: Perl 5.005 released. Adhocracy/Clan/Hierarchy.
• 2000: Perl 5.6 released.
• 2001: Work begins on Perl 6 "Apocalypses". Adhocracy/Clan.
• 2002: Perl 5.8 released. Clan/Hierarchy.
• 2004: Work begins on Perl 6 "Synopses". Adhocracy/Clan.
• 2005: Pugs launched, a Perl 6 interpreter written in Haskell (stalled in 2006). Pure Adhocracy! (I was there)
• 2003-2006: PONIE Project, a bridge between Perl 5 and Perl 6, an effort to rewrite the Perl 5 interpreter to run on Parrot, the Perl 6 virtual machine. Adhocracy.
• 2009: Rakudo Perl 6 released. Adhocracy/Clan.
• 2010: Perl 5.12 released. Perl 5 switches to regular annual releases. Clan/Hierarchy.
• 2020: Perl 7 announced as the successor to Perl 5. Adhocracy/Market.
• 2021: Perl 7 plan revised. Clan/Hierarchy/Market.

* (Update): During this very early period merlyn used an unorthodox and aggressive Perl marketing tactic by answering usenet requests for Unix shell/sed/awk code with snippets of Perl code ... so much so that posters started inserting "No Perl please" in their posts! ... which of course was simply ignored. merlyn believed so strongly in this tactic that he formed part of the 2.7% who voted against the formation of a separate comp.lang.perl newsgroup in December 1989! ... so perhaps this early period should be Adhocracy/Market.

Note that these estimates are just my guesses of Perl's culture during these years; corrections and insights are welcome, especially from folks who were key players in these events. I'd also love to see interesting or instructive cultural anecdotes from the years of the Perl timeline, for example: The infamous Jon Orwant mug throwing incident.

BTW, I remember attending thriving Perl Mongers meetings in the early 2000s - which had a completely different feel to the C++, Python and Agile user groups I was also attending. The main difference was Perl's quirky humour (e.g. London.pm declares war on Paris.pm and London.pm sponsoring a camel at London zoo). By comparison, the C++ and Python user groups were utterly humourless, the meetings having a totally different feel to them. The rise of Meetup changed everything; there were so many meetings that one of my workmates stopped buying food and cooking simply by attending a different geek Meetup group every night of the week (scoring free food each time)!

Update: See also: How long have you been using Perl? poll by vroom (and TimToady's reply ;-) ... and is he involved with Perl Development? - Re: Re: Re: Re: Synopsis 3 is out :)