The GPL and the Artistic License make it consistently possible for anyone to acquire perl. The issue is exclusivity. A company can't get exclusive rights to perl. They could conceivably make changes to it and call it theirs, but who would use it?

Maybe a lot of people if the company could add a lot of value to it... and that's where the community comes in¹. We don't just use perl... we make it better. We could have more than a "minor boycott" of the new language. We could boycott its use, maintenance, and development. There are few companies that could muster the resources that regularly go into developing perl, not to mention all the modules available on CPAN. And keep in mind also that there are many companies in the perl community. There are corporations both big and small with huge parts of their day to day operations that are dependent on perl².

The Perl Foundation (and YAS) is the least of the factors I mentioned, but it represents a non-profit corporation that is willing to support Perl's continuing development. I.e. unlike most open source initiatives, Perl has a money man. (Not one with real deep pockets, but it's a start.)

To conclude: they could try, but they wouldn't get far. And that's why they won't try.

Update: Added footnotes.

1. The community, in this case, is both the market and the competition. It would be crazy to try building market share under those conditions. ;-)

2. My point being that those companies would have a vested interest in preventing the privatization of perl

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

but who would use it?

Well, I keep hearing around here that Perl is so superior to Java and many, many people use Java. Don't underestimate the potential of a well-funded marketing department :)

unlike most open source initiatives, Perl has a money man.

Who can't even adequately fund Perl's founder and a couple devoted core developers to work on Perl. Need I remind you that $40,000,000,000 is a lot more than $100,000?

We could boycott its use, maintenance, and development.

Until your boss says "use it." It's nice to think that your personal development preferences affect these things, but they don't.

Don't underestimate the potential of a well-funded marketing department :)

By marketing their version of Perl they would be inadvertently marketing the original as well. There's not a lot of point in marketing something you don't have an exclusive on.

There are two ways to achieve that exclusivity. The "easy" way is legally. The hard way is through focused effort. By creating something that is prohibitively expensive to duplicate, you can win a defacto exclusivity. The "easy" way isn't possible with Perl and the community has already taken the hard way.

Need I remind you that $40,000,000,000 is a lot more than $100,000?

A company isn't going to throw 40 million or even 4 million (much less 40 billion) dollars into a project unless they can expect to make a considerable profit on it. For the other reasons I've already explained, the risk would be too high and the potential too low.

Until your boss says "use it."

Fortunately, I'm at the stage in my career where, if I can't outright dictate what technologies we'll use for something, I can exert a considerable influence¹. Frankly, I'm usually only told "no" when something costs too much... so, if perl were privatized, there would be a greater chance I'd be told not to use it.

1. So, my personal preferences actually do affect these things. :-) Still, my decisions are usually based on other factors like technical merit and business reasons.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

To conclude: they could, but they won't.

As far as I know $some_big_company has already poured lots of cash into the Perl5 project, and didnt try to steal it. The oneperl effort and GSAR's/ActiveState's work on Perl 5.6 was at least partially funded by $some_big_company.

So I think the evidence indicates you are totally correct that they won't.

Update Well, I guess I shouldn't give out legal advice anymore... ; )

Some company couldn't sell Perl, the GPL prevents that. Unless Larry and everyone who has ever contributed to perl (the interpretor, etc.) agreed to release Perl under something other than the GPL, Perl is safe from being sold by companies.

Wrong. ActiveState sells Perl, and sells proprietary extensions to Perl. Not always with source code.

How do they do that? Quite easily. Perl is dual-licensed under the GPL and the Artistic License - receiver's choice. ActiveState chooses the Artistic License. If you don't agree with those licensing terms, then you are free to not contribute to Perl...

I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, blah blah blah.

First off, the GPL allows anyone to sell the work in question - they just have to provide the source and allow everyone else the same rights. I could sell you the linux kernel right now for $10000 (or any other amount) and I could still be in compliance with the license (I'll even give you a 10% discount if you buy within the next 10 minutes!).

Secondly, Perl is dual licensed, under both the GPL and the artistic license, right? So what does that mean? It means that I can choose which one I accept (I'm a little sketchy here, but that's my interpretation, corrections are most welcome). So for someone looking to 'acquire' Perl, the GPL is irrelevant. Like a windows machine on a network, the artistic license is a weaker point of attack.

But like I said, don't lose any sleep over it :)