I'm not sure I follow. You say O'Reilly is using Perl to sell their books? And that by publishing books on Perl, they're trying to create a monopoly??

I believe this is incorrect. First, O'Reilly publishes on a huge number of topics - programming languages, the "hacks" series (including a hack book about *baseball*, for crying out loud), .Net, Microsoft applications and OSes, Linux, Unix, Web development, digital photography, SQL, network security, spam, and much more. Books on Perl are a significant minority of the titles, but a minority nonetheless.

There are any number of books on Perl by other publishers. I've bought many of them, and most of them are only marginally useful, if at all. O'Reilly's books pack more information into them, and they are often very thorough. Many of the books have close to 1,000 pages, and cost less than similar books from other publishers. O'Reilly is doing nothing more sinister than providing good quality for the money, something I wish more businesses would do.

As for [id://merlyn]'s posting links to his articles - could you provide us with a couple? I must have missed them.

O'Reilly certainly is in business for monetary gain. You are quite correct. Whether they are in it "more" for money than to help people is a matter known only to them. I cannot read a person's heart, and it is irrelevant. They provide a great service and do so in a pleasant way. They are responsive to their customers, something I don't find in many large corporations. Whether they are evil minions of the Dark Side, or angels from heaven, they nevertheless do good things.

I don't even know [id://merlyn] from the Chatterbox; I only know him through his Perlmonks posts and his excellent book (published by O'Reilly, I know). I like what he says because he knows what he's talking about, not because we're buddies.

I think your concerns for the Perl community are misplaced. Perl is doing quite well. O'Reilly is doing far more good than harm, both to Perl in particular, and to IT in general. There is no Perl monopoly, and there is no Lumber Cartel.