It might be so.
However, assuming it to be the implied rather than the assumed (or default) is perhaps a misunderstanding.
the internal sarcasm here is those who wish to rebuild, to evolve, object the changes to the original form. Those who have built and maintained, object to the adherence of a constant, or common, universal state.
Honestly i think Gloucester would be looking sideways at flies, wanton boys and gods right now.
]]>I have known both Sawyer and Todd to be benevolent and kind. I have never assumed they are angels who tread the light clouds of the fantastic; but to state they have never exhibited the quality of benevolence, that's bollocks mate. Also, in regard to BDFL - neither of them are, so double oops, still doesn't work as a never - maybe James Bond can give us all a Never Say Never Again.
The use of a reduction to the absurd is a fair technique but it doesn't scan so well here. As it isn't their nature and they don't have that position.
I am not seeking to call you out. I just didn't see this as anything but ad hominem. I see you as more than that. So maybe that's my fault. I see you as making a better response than this.
]]>Also. This borders on almost assuming nepotism. That's not the case. Most of the work has been done not by self-appointed, but because no one else was doing it.
That's likely not the best solution. But nothing gets done if no one turns up to do it.
]]>Maybe our failure here is that we didn't give you a better way for your voice to be heard. For that. I am truly sorry.
You have a voice.
I try to read as much of the comments and posts as is possible. But you can find me and I will respond. So tell me how we can do better? I have a fairly tidy platform to promote a voice. Let me help you.
]]>Sorry just thinking of my current government.
I agree that there should be a democratic mandate and a governance structure and some system of controls to prevent idiosyncratic systems of governance forming.
However systems are "made by the people who turn up and do things. So did we fail you, or did you fail us? I don't know." However I do want you to turn up.
It is good to have change. It is good to have evolution. It is good to hear real passion from people.
]]>Come gather around people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
(The Times They Are A-Changin' lyrics © Bob Dylan Music Co.)
As of the 7th November 2016 Karen Pauley has officially stepped down as President of the Perl Foundation. Replacing Karen at this present time will be long standing Perl Foundation member Jim Brandt
So that is how it is officially announced and let’s quickly move away from such formal tones for the rest of this article.
It is with a great sense of melancholy, and probably an even profounder sense of respect and gratitude that I am writing this piece so please bear with me if the style seems somewhat stilted or unusual. I know that some people will feel regret at the loss of Karen, I want to stop you all now, don’t think about what we may be losing, think of the changes that have been made.
Karen has been a face at Perl conferences and events for many years, even before she started at The Perl Foundation as a Steering Committee member and Chair in March 2008. Karen made an instant improvement to the Foundation and was appointed Vice-President in July 0f 2009 before her eventual appointment as President in March 2010.
For the better part of nine years Karen has been an influential component in the Perl Foundation. There are many people who like to make a stance, place their mark on what they do. Karen didn’t have that mindset.
“I wasn't a dreamer with big plans and a vision”
What she wanted to do instead was bring stability to a rather turbulent period. To give us a strong central core and to settle the community around a focussed point. Placing order in the natural chaos of community and moving steadily forwards. This task is the harder, it is not as noticeable but it is precisely what a ‘foundation’ is supposed to supply. Karen’s goal was to give us a strong base on which to build and it is an inspiration that she did this without fanfare or tumult.
Karen also brought to the table a strong set of organisational skills and the understanding of the legal issues to address the legal challenges we faced at the time. There are legal matters that will never be fully discussed or revealed that were resolved only because of Karen’s involvement. Matters pertaining to copyright and challenges to the community that were circumnavigated only because we had her leadership and understanding.
Alongside the strong community base Karen recognised the need to stabilise and promote the language that our community shares. She is the principal instrument in the Perl5 Core Maintenance Fund and the Perl6 Development Fund. Since 2010 Karen has been working with a number of Perl companies and communities to fund work by David Mitchell and other key Perl5 developers to strengthen our core language.
The Perl5 CMF was a pivotal step in the way TPF changed the management and funding of larger language projects.
It is important to note that David has been funded through a variety of grants, supported by company, community and individual donations since 2010 with little visible issues. This takes significant investment in time and effort that is not apparent outside of those involved in the administration of the organisations affairs.
She has also been the strongest cheerleader for every Perl5 Pumpking providing as much support and strong community backing for their tenures. This is especially important to the whole community and to how we stayed strong.
When Karen first became President there was a feeling that the TPF was all about Perl6. The focus of grants was from the Hague Perl6 Fund and this gave a feeling that the organisation itself was all about Perl6. Karen worked quietly, yet forcefully, to change that perception. She wanted the organisation to be about the language and all its projects, about the people and all their activities and about meditating and encouraging dialogue between those many diverse relationships.
“I was neither a Perl 5 or a Perl 6 person and worked to try to make us be about Perl and its many communities.”
It was Karen who involved us with a number of outside programmes and Outreachy (https://www.gnome.org/outreachy/) has been an important personal one for her. It would be a great time for someone to speak with Karen about the Outreachy programme and learn how to take the reigns for it in 2017 and beyond. If anyone has a desire to do so then they should contact us at their earliest convenience. I know it is a concern for Karen that we keep our involvement in such initiatives.
I know Karen, so I know that she will have some personal regrets as she leaves. Things she could have done more with, things she wanted to get done but the time wasn’t there. I hope that she is able to reconcile herself as she did far more than was ever asked and enriched us in ways we will never fully understand. We owe her a great debt of gratitude for her time, her efforts, her direction and for being a truly unflappable human centre to our community.
Karen’s final words as we thought about this article struck a chord with me. As always we have her modesty and her delight in other people. It is a sadness that wraps around my heart at the thought of losing her as our President. However, I also have a great joy that we had such a strong, creative and friendly leader for so long.
“Perl, for me, will always be about the people. I have worked with some of the most amazing, talented, and creative people. They have enriched my life and I was always be grateful for that.”
Thank you Karen Pauley.
‘The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slowest now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fading
And the first one now will later be last
Cause the times they are a-changing’
(The Times They Are A-Changin' lyrics © Bob Dylan Music Co.)
This year OSCON, Europe, will be held in London between the 17th-18th October (with a training day on the 19th), the Perl Foundation will once again have a table in the not-for-profit pavilion. As at previous events volunteers will be manning the Perl stand throughout the day on the Monday and Tuesday and they will also be available in the early evening.
The Perl Foundation is hosting the stand, but as we also like to promote the whole Perl community we will be giving away material from various other Perl organisations such as the Perl5 Porters, CPAN Testers, MetaCPAN, Perl6 Community, Mojolicious, Dancer and EPO. The message will be to promote the whole community and not just a single slice. If you have any materials for your project or Perl-related community that you want to share then make sure to contact Mark Keating as soon as possible.
OSCON is a large, and popular, event and it is important that we have a presence, but it is equally important that we interact with the broader Open Source community and this event will hopefully afford us both. If you are thinking of attending OSCON then make sure to head over and say hi at the stand and maybe have a discussion about Perl with the broader community.
We will have a plethora of stickers and badges to give away for free and maybe a few plushes that you can buy.
]]>The P5P Hackathon is a seeding event for the essential work done inside the Perl core. It functions as a symposium where current, and future, Perl5 hackers can meet and cross-pollinate ideas that may develop into significant future evolution.
This year the Hackathon has three major aims:
The Hackathon will take place within two different locations in Amsterdam at Booking.com offices, both locations are within a short walk of each other.
The Perl Foundation and Perl5 Porters are deeply indebted to our Diamond Sponsors, Booking.com; our Platinum Sponsors of cPanel and Craigslist; Silver Sponsors, Bluehost; and Bronze Sponsors of Assurant, Grant Street Group and Signature Information Solutions for their support of this, and future Perl Foundation activities.
We are deeply indebted to Fastmail for their full sponsorship of Matthew Horsfall attendance.
I went to FOSDEM in Brussels this year as a representative of the Perl Foundation. As such I spent the weekend doing my best to be a good advocate of the Perl programming languages.
FOSDEM for those of you in gentle unawareness is probably the world's largest, free, Open Source event. It is held each year in Brussels, Belgium, and attracts speakers for hundreds of talks on dozens of projects, languages and distros. The event is attended by over seven thousand people from almost everywhere in the world.
Each year the Perl Community is fortunate that Claudio, Wendy and Liz organise a Perl table, developer room and social event. I attended last year as a member of Shadowcat and like many other Perl volunteers helped on the table. This year I was proud to be at FOSDEM to represent the Perl Foundation and use the time as advocacy about Perl and our community.
A Little on the Construct
The weekend took the following shape for both myself and Tom Bloor, who was paying his own way from the UK, but he was happy to help out:
Saturday
Arrive at the event early morning (07:45) to help set up.
This was to unpack the truck, books, shelves and banners. By the time other volunteers arrived we had unpacked the van and started with the books.
Man the stand (stood for the most of the time chatting and helping answer questions) until 18:00 and the close of the day.
The manning of the stand involved talking to people about the newly released Perl6, the latest changes in Perl5, the changes in the community over the years, available jobs, the organisations, and for many what is Perl and who we are,[1] along with any other questions.
These are all elements that we in the Perl world have good understanding of but are invisible outside.
Evening social
This is a great little sub-event inside our local Perl presence with fellow community members arranged by Liz and Wendy And a moderately sized bunch of Perl folks (somewhere around 50 people).
Sunday
Arrive at the event early morning (07:45) to help set up.
Today I was on the stand all day and Tom would be making back-up videos in the Perl Dev Room to make sure that all the Perl talks were captured.[2]
Being early meant that I was able to straighten the stand and get the merchandise ready for what would be another long day for Wendy and I at the Perl booth.
I should point out that a number of people also come to the booth during the two days to help out. Curtis, Steffan, Liz, Salve, Mark Overmeer, Theo, Paul Evans, Sawyer all took turns being the relevant expert to answer the more difficult programmer questions.
Sunday also saw Wendy, Curtis and I interviewed for the Hacker News podcast, so at some point I have to brave myself to go and listen to the cast with me in it.
The end of the day.
On Sunday is always a scramble to pack the booth. Wendy and Liz bring a large amount of items to FOSDEM and so we were all grateful that so many people turned up to help us pack. There were so many that we had to send people away. All of you that helped, in whatever manner, have our gratitude.
Success Story
FOSDEM felt like a success this year for Perl and the Perl community. Despite a longer than anticipated gestation period we had the release of Perl6 last Christmas, and we were able to talk about this with great pride. We have both the oldest and youngest of the so-called scripting languages.[4]
We also have a lot of good things happening in both Perl languages. Perl has two running success stories and as marketeers, Wendy and I consider ourselves as such for these types of events, that really helps.
The sheer amount of material we gave away, the number of camels and books that were sold and the constant stream of people we spoke to is testament to some level of interest in Perl. It only remains to see how we continue to grow on the multiple languages, and how we can use that to further advocate our strong, and vibrant, community.
On the subject of multiple Perls, I found it easy to explain why there is a Perl5, a Perl6 and even a RPerl in existence. I was able to discuss easily that despite the numbers Perl5 was the name and so Perl6 is just a name, they were both languages. For the most part people who have little understanding, or a historical knowledge of Perl this was easy to grasp, so after all that 'what's in a name?'
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. (William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, Act II Scene ii)
Notes
[1] A good number of the people at FOSDEM are students who are new to the many different languages available.
[2] There have been issues in previous years, although a great number of improvements are made each year by the FOSDEM staff.
[3] As a side note there are some people who still think having multiple official Perls is problematical. However aside from the expected occasional jibe, intended to provoke that we skilfully ignored and derailed, there was little contention.
[4] I know there are some that will doubt the use of youngest in this post but I will cover that discussion elsewhere.
]]>OSCON has become increasing less language-specific over the years and now doesn’t have language tracks or rooms, however Perl has a long association with this conference including the fact that it evolved from the original Perl Conference and for many years hosted the State of the Onion.
As we approach 2016 with a major new version of Perl in the shape of Perl6 and an ever-vibrant and yearly releases of Perl5 the idea of not having a presence at OSCON is quite strange.
So I am asking all of you to consider if you can submit a talk to this event. We have a very good chance of getting a main room spot if we talk about Perl6 especially since O’Reilly have been pushing known Perl authors on the idea of a Perl6 book. This could be a turning point where we get new Perl5 books as well.
This will not happen without some generous souls from the community digging deep and taking up the torch for the community and language. You, and indeed we, do not have much time, just a little over 48hrs.
You can submit your talk here:
http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/open-source/public/cfp/423
The Westfield Leader has been using Perl for more than a decade (since 1998), providing many essential functions. Over time they have received considerable learning help from the Perl community.
They are privately owned weekly newspapers in Westfield, NJ since 1890. Perl contributed to helping us digitize all of the archives, which run as far back as 1907, and they are now searchable on the Internet.
Perl provides point in time backup (20 minutes) for the composing of files during press time production by editorial staff.
"Sometimes a file may crash on our LAN during deadline and this saves the day."
Utilising Perl and rsync, they backup business data, sales data and production data for local archival, then sync this to a remote location that also runs using Perl and Debian servers.
Go Leader use a number of cgi scripts online help us conduct business with our advertisers and subscribers. The full database management of 10,000 paid subscribers, management and renewals which can be done online, by mail, and by phone is done with the help of Perl.
Almost all Perl things that are performed are custom designs tailored specifically to match internal business requirements. The team are almost entirely self taught and they have automate a great number of their business processes.
Perl and Debian servers with Windows workstations have enabled them to perform many things that otherwise would be financially impossible as well as challenging if at all possible with commercial, or off-the-shelf, software.
Out of gratitude, they recently contributed to the Perl 6 team for a new server. In their words:
"I'm writing you of this in hopes of inspiring others. We are not professional programmers but are able to succeed nevertheless. Thank you all."