Do you really believe that we would get any attention out of Sun if we were to r un into a problem with Java?

Well, I haven't done anything with Java, so I wouldn't be able to answer that. But I can answer some other questions.

• Have you gotten any help from HP when facing NIS problems at 5 am on a Sunday morning?

  Yes

• Have you gotten any help from Netapps when facing occasional crashes?

  Kernel patch was supplied within a week after submitting a core dump.

• Have you gotten any help from Sybase when facing database problems?

  On numerous accounts; many problems were fixed right away or I was called back within 4 hours by a specialist.

• Have you ever got any help from SUN?

  More often than I want to remember.

With Perl, we're not locked into a specific vendor for support, and the community from which we can get prompt attention is very large.

Perl 5.6.0 was released more than 2 years ago. Perl 5.6.1, its first and only maintainance release was more than a year later (and more than a year ago). Perl 5.8.0 will be here soon, but hasn't yet arrived yet.

Releases of open source software isn't always as speedy as we like to claim it is.

(And no, this should not be taken as a sneer into the direction of Jarkko, or p5p - not at all).

Abigail

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