Please, don't hamstring CPAN competition. CPAN is so strong in part because it is so open to new solutions to old problems. Since there's no annointed solution, new modules quickly find users, regardless of the competition from the established players.

Sure, sometimes this is bad for the individual - inexperienced users sometimes make bad decisions and pick something unstable - but it's good for CPAN as a whole. And with time users of CPAN learn to find the right module for a given task, on a given day.

Ask yourself this, would DBI be where it is today if oraperl had been listed on the opening page as the "Best way to Program Oracle with Perl"? Would Text::CSV_XS be so bitchin' if every search for "csv" on search.cpan.org terminated in a recommendation for Text::CSV? Of course you're not suggesting either of these, but I think the motivation is similar, as is the likely result.

I've always thought the CPAN FAQ on a closely related topic had a great response - it simply points to this page:

    http://xxx.lanl.gov/help/faq/statfaq

-sam

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