Perl 5.6.0 came out in March 2000. Perl 5.8.0 came out in July 2002. Those releases are seven and five years old, respectively.

I haven't received a nickel for any patch I've contributed to Perl, whether documentation, tests, or functional code. I haven't received a penny for any module I've ever written or maintained. I'm not complaining; I've never asked for anything nor have I expected anything. I wrote the code because I wanted to and I released it because I hoped it would be useful.

I've fixed bugs in Perl and in various pieces of code because I wanted to fix them. I added features and documentation and tests because I wanted to use those features, to see other people use them, and to have confidence that they work. I didn't write them because I wanted or expected money, or appreciation. I wrote them to get used.

It is not worth one second of my time even to think about supporting ancient versions of Perl, versions which are missing useful features and which contain known and unfixed bugs. I didn't add features to code or fix bugs in the hope that maybe five or seven years later I might be able to rely on that feature being present or a bug being absent without someone complaining that for all that I've never requested or expected money, praise, or even appreciation, my code doesn't run on ancient software. I helped the build great software because I want to use it.

It is ridiculous to expect volunteers to support code that is seven years old, code eleven stable releases old.

That's my opinion and my choice of how to spend my free time and how I donate my experience and code and effort. Again, I don't get paid for this. I've never asked for payment. I've never expected payment or appreciation. I just put out the best code I can for anyone to use as they see fit under a license that allows them to do many useful things.

If someone else chooses to spend his or her free time bending over backwards to provide shiny new software for people who've demonstrated that they don't care about upgrading because they can't be bothered to upgrade to a version of Perl released this millennium, that's his or her own choice and I won't stand in the way. I think it's ridiculous, but I'm not going to tell anyone how to spend his or her free time, just like I'm not going to put up with anyone telling me that I should spend one moment of my time caring that one of my modules doesn't run on Perl 5.004 (originally released in May 1997 and most recently updated in April 1999).

Update: reversed "five and seven", per talexb's suggestion.

In reply to Re: The need and the price of running on old versions of Perl by chromatic
in thread The need and the price of running on old versions of Perl by szabgab

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