If people are reinventing wheels, they are usually not contributing useful patches and ideas to CPAN.

A strong CPAN makes my life easier. Also, it has been my experience that despite what you say about integration problems, reinventing wheels usually leads to wasted time, less functionality, and more bugs, all of which makes Perl look bad.

There are no quality requirements for CPAN. Anyone can already load any crap on CPAN, and many already do. Non-overlapping functionality doesn't make CPAN stronger, it probably makes it weaker. Choice is good (remember one of the slogans of Perl: there's more than one way of doing it?) Your reasoning would mean that the first module doing Y that was uploaded to CPAN is necessary the best one. Good heavens. Had Matt Wright made his formmail.pl available on CPAN, you would have preferred noone else would have created a form to email utility, but they all had used Matt's script.

Abigail

Reinventing wheels is usually done because someone didn't like the original wheel.

From what I've seen, it's usually done because someone is unwilling to deal with the politics or technical issues of installing a module at their site. Sometimes it's because they're too lazy to check CPAN or to spend any time trying to understand the documentation for existing modules. Or sometimes it's because the perfectly workable API that comes with the module doesn't match someone else's fantasy of the perfect API. Every now and then it is done because someone looked at the existing modules and they didn't meet the project's requirements.

It's often more efficient to reinvent a round wheel, than to submit patches for a square wheel

I have nothing against someone making a new module if the existing modules are not good. Often though, a patch is all that's really needed.

There are no quality requirements for CPAN. Anyone can already load any crap on CPAN, and many already do.

The cream rises. I would never tell anyone to use a bad module from CPAN.

Your reasoning would mean that the first module doing Y that was uploaded to CPAN is necessary the best one.

Certainly not. I never said such a thing.

Had Matt Wright made his formmail.pl available on CPAN, you would have preferred noone else would have created a form to email utility, but they all had used Matt's script.

Matt's script was not good. Someone would have fixed it or replaced it by now.

I don't advocate people blindly using whatever is on CPAN and never questioning the quality, but you'd be a fool to write your own HTML parser these days without a very good reason.

On my site http://jokubonis.20megsfree.com I present idea - The Square Wheel. At first I want surprise You that roll of Square Wheel is very restful and lenitive! I invite You to see videoclip on this page how a square wheel roll equal as easy round wheel. Be surprised and surprise Your friends.

...at least pointing people towards a publicly available wheel and encouraging them to have a go at it.

I've no problem with people "pointing to and encouraging" the use of CPAN--I've even been known to do this myself surprisingly. I do take umbrage at being told that the "solution" to my problem is in doing something completely different to what i am trying to do (and about which I hadn't asked for advice) just so that I can utilise a CPAN module I have no interest in.

My re-invented solutions have caused noone any "wasted time, less functionality, and more bugs", nor made "Perl look bad", because I've not made any of them available on CPAN nor anywhere else.

The only module I've so far uploaded to CPAN, was withdrawn within 1 day. I uploaded it because 3 people seperately encouraged me to do so. I withdrew it because one person, who views I respect, suggested that it "polluted the namespace" because I had named it as a pragma, rather than deeply nesting it in some obscure namespace where it would never been seen. Reserving namespaces is well and good, but if they are never allowed to be used, then they become wasted space. C'est la vie!

As for the rest of my modules. I re-invent for my own learning purposes. As and when I have something that I think is of sufficient quality to warrent inclusion, I will do so.