If you really think that by asking money and shutting up Perl, you would make it more popular and profitable, then I challenge you to go out and try to do it.

If you read the licensing terms, you can take Perl, take advantage of the artistic license, rename it slightly, and make your own version which can be proprietary if you want. (See oraperl and sybperl for examples where this was done with Perl 4.)

My prediction based on both theory and observation of past examples (particularly examples of what people in the Lisp world do wrong time after time again) is that you will put in a lot of energy, lose money, and never achieve popularity. For some of the theory, the usually referred to starting place is The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Of course if you want to charge money for something and can get away with it, go ahead. No less than Larry Wall has said that, It's almost like we're doing Windows users a favor by charging them money for something they could get for free, because they get confused otherwise. But I think that as time goes by it is becoming more mainstream to accept that it is possible for software to be both free and good at the same time.

In reply to Re (tilly) 2: The Decline of Perl - My Opinion by tilly
in thread The Decline of Perl - My Opinion by trs80

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