But see, I consider Perl modules to be extensions of the language environment itself. A company choosing to develop in Perl isn't going to balk at the fact that they have no IP interest in the Perl language itself. Same with the modules. Perl modules are typically written with some very flexible licensing. You can generally distribute Perl modules with your script under most any license, and if the distribution of a module is impeded by the fact that you're trying to sell your script, all you have to do is provide instructions (or a properly built package so that CPAN can extract the dependencies on its own).

At that point, the only thing to complain about is the fact that this huge project has turned from a 2-month, multi-10-thousand-line application to a 3-day Perl script, making extensive use of pre-written modules. Some companies intent on making a bundle from such an application are going to get iffy about it when they find out the resulting script is only a few hundred lines.

Note: Code samples are for conceptual use only and generally are not meant to be cut/pasted into a production application. Always 'use strict', have a thorough understanding of the code you use, and check the return values of functions and handle errors according to your needs. - Fastolfe