I own three modules on CPAN and plan to upload more. Here's the thing - I have very limited access to different OSes. In fact, I only have access to Solaris, Cygwin, and, occasionally, Redhat9. I depend on my userbase to tell me when something goes wrong and how to fix it.

I just spent 6 hours tracking down a warning in the latest mod_perl2 build ... a warning for something that neither I nor any employer of mine will never use. Why? It's my contribution. If mod_perl didn't exist, I would not have a job. In case you missed that, let me repeat it:

Without mod_perl, Apache, Perl, CPAN, and tons of other stuff, I would not have a job.

It's my payment for the hundreds of thousands of manhours that went into mod_perl. It's the way I give back for a product that is the preeminent product in its sphere.

Let me say this another way - you are the recipient of over 10,000,000 manhours of design, development, testing, retesting, refining, and tuning. For free. (There are almost that many manhours again devoted to the serious modules on CPAN. Just think about that.)

But, it's not completely free. The cost is your time and your expertise. You are using modules on platforms I simply cannot access. I need you and your OS. I need your testing time. I need your patches.

Don't give up. Take the time to at least submit the results of your tests. Just something like: make test > bugreport &2> bugreport; mail owner@isp.com < bugreport

Hit Enter and work in another window. That's all we ask.

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