rvosa has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Dear fellow monks,

I am planning to submit a new module to CPAN. The intended audience consists of evolutionary biologists, who may find the module useful for parsing, analyzing and manipulating phylogenetic trees. The working title / temporary namespace has been Phylo::, but I gather there is some resistance to introducing new top-level namespaces. I have been trying to find out whether I can use Bio::Phylo, but I'm not sure whether the Bio:: namespace is reserved for BioPerl (which I'm not a part of). I have posted on the BioPerl mailing list trying to find out if that's the case, but I didn't get a response. Perhaps someone here knows whether I can use Bio:: without being a contributor to the open bioinformatics foundation?

Thanks,

Rutger

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: choosing a CPAN namespace
by jhourcle (Prior) on Jul 30, 2005 at 14:55 UTC

    You may wish to ask on comp.lang.perl.modules or modules@perl.org if the bio folks aren't responding. See the PAUSE documnetation for more info.

    You can also try contacting the listed maintainer of bioperl directly.

[reply]
Re: choosing a CPAN namespace
by brian_d_foy (Abbot) on Jul 30, 2005 at 18:16 UTC

    No one owns any namespaces, although some people control them by convention (and we PAUSE maintainers don't break those conventions).

    I don't see any reason that you shouldn't be able to use Bio::*. As long as you've publically announced your intention in the right places (and it sounds as if you have) and nobody objects, then use the name.

    You can also post a note to modules @ perl . org (either manually or through the "Register Module" form on PAUSE. Our crack cadre of module namers and registars can give useful advice and guidance.

    --
    brian d foy <brian@stonehenge.com>
[reply]
      The current BioPerl pumpking has clarified - the Bio::* namespace is not even informally reserved for the open-bioinformatics foundation. I'm free to submit. Thanks for your input!
[reply]
Re: choosing a CPAN namespace
by scrubroot (Novice) on Jul 30, 2005 at 16:21 UTC
    If there is resistance to creating new namespaces, then I don't see as to how anyone would object to adding your module to Bio.
[reply]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom