The keys to getting a module in the distro are many and varied.

• Some one in p5p must champion the module.
• p5p must be convinced that it is generally applicable.
• Larry must be so convinced, as well =)
• The module needs to we WELL tested on weird platforms and under odd conditions.
• You have to justify that its value is greater than its size, since you are forcing everyone who uses perl to download it.

In addition, pure perl is easier to pass through p5p since XS code and C code is notoriously harder to make platform independent.

As to the suggestions, Date::Manip is huge and fugly, many people hate it and there are a lot of smaller and more focussed modules out there. It would be hard to convince p5p to champion it.

DBI is useless by itself since you have to have DBD drivers and other DB dependencies to make it work. Why include half a solution when you still have to download what you want. Loading it and a generic SQL engine in perl and DBDs for CSV and DB_FILE and such might pass but it is a lot of code for a tool people will mostly avoid when working with the weak DBs.

It wouldn't suprise me if Parse:RecDescent made it into core one day. If more and more other modules grow to depend on it, it likely will.

LWP and Net:: are just too big and many many sites never touch them. I am still suprised CGI made it, once upon a time there was a great backlash against branding perl merely as the "CGI Language".

In Storable's case, it isn't generally known or used nearly as much as it could be. Also, isn't Data::Dumper in core and _debatably_ used for many of the same porpoises, however fishy they are?

Neither POE nor Time::HiRes are for the faint of heart. =)

Finally, English is in there because it is a small and 'useful' for writing easily understood scripts. I call it the "book" module since it makes scripts in books readable. It is small and painless to include.

--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)