From: "David Ihnen" <dav...@norchemlab.com>
Why it is bad that a language like PHP is more useful for more
programmers?
Because then they start thinking they're software engineers instead of
just programmers. They get credibility, without having earned it through
good engineering. They propagate their half-baked concepts and good
enough for what I did before hackery into areas that hurt their clients,
cause loss of money, success, and jobs, furthermore lowering the
reputation of anybody who claims the title software engineer.
This is very true, and this means that PHP creates damage to the good
software world, but most programmers don't care about creating good
software, and having credibility, but earning money on a short term.
It seems that Perl is beaten by this new atitude, and the fact that it is a
better language doesn't help too much.
You may disagree, or think that is not important. I think it is important
on a far deeper cultural level.
Of course I agree, but I just tell that Perl doesn't have tools for fighting
this.
Nobody cares about a contracts for software licences in my country.
EXACTLY. So trying to make money on contracts and software licenses is
useless. Obfuscating does nothing but try to enforce a software license
that will be ignored anyway - so what value does it provide?
If the program is hard enough protected, most users won't be able to get its
clear source code, so we can say that it is protected.
But if we protect it by just a licence, nothing would stop the user to sell
it to someone else (theoreticly, of course, not that this thing really
happends).
The target audience should be the students, the future possible perl
programmers.
How do you get their ear?
Using the same techniques used by PHP, Python...
Making it able to run on free shared hosting sites with no root and shell
access, and beeing more interested in Windows portability.
Perl could be also used in commercial proprietary programs, and
unfortunately in some countries it is very hard to earn money from open
source.
You sell them a solution. This is where the money is.
And then you will see that many other users also use it, without paying you
money.
This is why I said that the software companies prefer Java, because
nobody considers that it is something bad if a program made in Java is
not open source.
Until the company they bought it from vanishes, the source code is lost,
they need to make a slight but critical change to the functionality, and
find that it is almost completely undoable because its compiled.
Most companies don't have an IT department which would be able to understand
a source code, and they won't find perl programmers very easy if that code
is made in perl anyway.
Octavian
