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Effect on Perl 5Effect on Perl 5Posted Feb 13, 2013 1:36 UTC (Wed) by raiph (guest, #89283)In reply to: Effect on Perl 5 by pboddie Parent article: Chromatic: Goodnight, Parrot
> if someone has already pushed in front of you and tabled a claim to the next major version number, playing leapfrog is just payback.
The "someone" is Larry Wall, who made the name "Perl" up, has spent 25 years volunteering most of his spare time, and frequently a lot more than that, to developing Perl, and has always been clear that he's not relinquishing his BDFL role in relation to the brandname "Perl" and is not interested in renaming Perl 6.
Imo it would be good if Perl 5 were renamed Perl 7 and then Perl 6 and Perl 5 merged back together with them becoming fully reintegrated at around Perl 11. But Larry sees things differently and I respect his view and his BDFL status.
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Effect on Perl 5 Posted Feb 14, 2013 12:49 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Well, part of what I am trying to communicate is that the right to use a name is not always seen in the same way by everyone involved. I don't doubt Larry Wall's commitment to Perl, and he can make a dialect of COBOL and call it Perl for all I care, but when other people feel that they too have a stake in the brand, they get rather upset if things start to change under their feet. One sees this even with brands like Coke where disgruntled customers with no involvement in the making of the product get upset at changes in the form of the product.
To summarise, someone can be completely entitled to control a brand but they have to live with the consequences of their decisions. We've seen this with KDE and GNOME, of course, but also with Python and Zope. The interesting thing about Zope is that the project's output was actually renamed from Zope 3 to BlueBream precisely because the people with the right to use the name felt that continuing to do so was confusing to people.
Effect on Perl 5 Posted Feb 14, 2013 18:55 UTC (Thu) by raiph (guest, #89283) [Link]
> Well, part of what I am trying to communicate is that the right to use a name is not always seen in the same way by everyone involved.
I hear what you are saying (and totally agree).
> I don't doubt Larry Wall's commitment to Perl, and he can make a dialect of COBOL and call it Perl for all I care
He wouldn't do that because he is very committed to Perl. Perl 6 is very clearly Perl, not COBOL.
> but when ... people feel that they too have a stake in the brand, they get rather upset if things start to change under their feet.
Think about that with Larry and sixers where the ... appears. They have put 12 years in to producing a worthy new Perl. Rather than help get it production ready most folk are happier to complain about the name.
Now think about it with "others" as you originally wrote where the ... appears. What has changed under their feet and who changed it?
> To summarise, someone can be completely entitled to control a brand but they have to live with the consequences of their decisions.
Right. I think Larry understands that Perl 6 solves pretty much all the problems with Perl 5 while retaining its essence and he's not going to let pent up frustration with how long its taken and its changes in syntax derail the efforts of the last 12 years.
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