It seemed to me, since I've been apart of PerlMonks for many, many years now (yes, I am posting as anonymous because I know some of you worship O'Reilly staff) that Perl, in a way, is just another way for them to advertise their books and services.

First clue was Perl.com is owned by O'Reilly. The domain should be public domain as Perl is open source. Instead it's owned by a specific company trying to reap money off of it.

Secondly, they release a million books on the topic every few months it appears and trying to be the only books available for this specific language. It's obvious they are trying to be a monopoly for Perl and it's really heartbreaking.

Thirdly, Merlyn is here and he always links to and posts about his articles regarding Perl on the O'Reilly site or newsletter. I realize this is a Perl community for such information, but when is it that information is no longer information but more of a sales letter?

I don't purchase O'Reilly books anymore because I don't like what they're doing and requested our local library a year or two ago to stop their books all together. They said they'd look into it, but since they don't have much money and the IT department is not a top priority, no such books will be ordered any time soon.

I'm not saying the information they give is bad and they don't help the Perl community. I just think they are here more for monetary gain than to assist others.

Many of you are friends with Merlyn which means your replies and opinions would be somewhat biased, I know him only by reading his replies in the CB and SOPW. I'm not looking for an arguement or anything but I am curious to see what other people think about this.

In reply to O'reilly some sort of perl monopoly? by Anonymous Monk

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