I love hearing about perl success stories, however corporations that don't focus on object reusability, centralized management, and the available talent pool, do so at great risk to long term objectives.

MSDW made a corporate commitment to Perl when java was still a fat ugly child that hogged more resources than produced results. They were in a position to make perl work for them. But the great bulk of the brick and mortar world is approaching the Open System and Open Source world with the cynisism of the mainframe mindset, relying upon much longer historical perspectives than most Open Source folk care to respect.

During the course of evaluating app servers I pointed out that it seemed foolish to purchase such expensive solutions when Open Source alternatives like Jonas or the Jonas/Enhydra solution were available open source, and that the code was actually cleaner than it's commercial counterparts. It was instantly shot down with the famous line "Who's going to provide 24x7x365 instantaneous production support". I pointed out that with the money that would have gone to licensing and services the corp could provide it's own support staff. This was promptly shot down with issues of available talent, Human Resource issues, and of course the inevitable legal Intellectual Property problems.

Morgan Stanley may be able to afford the requirements for supporting perl and open source, but most managers find that a 1-800-xxx-xxxx number easier to explain to the top brass than the myriad of complexities that surround the support of Open Source.