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

When I have something to share, and I see something that comes within the realm- but is clearly written by a javascript monkey overdosing on c bananas stolen from a high school with the mentality that OO means there's one subroutine that returns one blessed hash and no other methods in the class- Think of a namespace at least with two::depths... I would choose another namespace.

Something funny happened. I made a module about a year ago, I put it up on cpan. A few days ago I got a kind notice from a fellow perl hacker notifying me that someone else had 'officially' registered the namespace, and he suggested I change my namespace.

Indeed I didn't even petition to register the namespace. Yes, the author registering this namespace had all the right to do so. I just would feel like a real ass doing this to someone else. If they coded the 'Linux' module and it was clearly one of 'those' aforementioned packages- ok.. maybe.. But 'CGI::PathInfo'?

So, next time I see Useful::Thing package as unregistered namespace, it's all good to just request the namespace? This is not seen by the community as an assinine thing to do?

update

As corion stated, my package is 2007, the other package is 2005. I made a mistake. I actually uploaded a package whose namespace was already taken. Somehow I let that slip, and the conflict came about a few months later.

Fortunately I'm using CVS and gnu/linux and I have no scruples running mass regexes accross the board. New package is CGI::Scriptpaths. I fixed dependencies by other packages I have and updated those also.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: (OT) cpan love gone wrong
by Corion (Patriarch) on Feb 12, 2008 at 15:38 UTC

    Seriously, I don't see what the issue is - CGI::PathInfo was released in 2005, and you seem to have released a module of the same name (resp. LEOCHARRE::CGI::PathInfo) in 2007. Namespaces on CPAN are handed out on a first-come first-served base, so the 2005 release has first rights on that name.

    If you want to use the name CGI::PathInfo in your modules, there is nobody holding you back, but you'll forego the installation via CPAN and the CPAN testers, obviously. Also, I consider it unwise and rude to release a distribution with the same name as somebody else's, whether or not the two do very different things.

    I don't see blindly registering any namespace as useful - if you don't have the code to back it up, the namespace should be left free for the taking. A bad example is Javascript::Engine, which just exists as a download placeholder for the (IMO badly named) JE. A counterexample to this is Alien which at least has a manifesto describing the idea. But the package name you mention even has code backing it, so I'm missing your point.

    Update: Weird - upon looking again, I must have hallucinated LEOCHARRE::CGI::PathInfo, as there is no such package now...

[reply]
[d/l]

      Something is ridiculously strange here- and I am quite confused. This was my module CGI::PathInfo

      I would never release a module of the name that was already present on cpan. Even if the module's namespace was not officially registered via cpan.

      I may have made a terrible screqup- maybe when I sought for CGI::PathInfo before- it didn't show up- and maybe the other module recently got the namespace approved.. ??? My version has been up for a while, this is the first I hear of a conflict.

      I have to look further into this. I will rename my module regardless.

[reply]
Re: (OT) cpan love gone wrong
by perrin (Chancellor) on Feb 12, 2008 at 15:41 UTC
    Why don't you contact this person and discuss it? Do you even know if he/she was aware of your module?
[reply]
      As Corion noted, the first module is indeed 2005, mine is indeed 2007- I have to figure out how I made such a mistake as to post a module of a pre-existing name- I make sure not to because it's stupid as dirt to do that.
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