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.";