Re: PERL as shibboleth and the Perl community

[swimmingcartel]

I don't think that those were the things messed up in the previous thread. Based on the last thread, everyone already understood what you had said.

The real issue is that: on one hand, we understand and respect your passion towards Perl, and lots of us share the feeling with you; on the other hand, we respectfully disagree that everyone should behave in a required uniformed way.

The fun of Perl community or open source community is largely contributed by the freedom everyone feels and enjoys in such community. If we suddenly started to bound like other commercial societies, then we are losing the basic value we expected from such communities like Perl community or open source community.

Yes, it is good to contribute (code) to the community if one happened to have contributable and reusable code, but one is not forced to pursuit such code forcefully. One certainly is not disqualified from the community simply because he/she never contributed code, or time to test, or ...

I would like to say that the biggest contribution everyone had is to use Perl. The fact that you use it is the best confirmation that you love it! And the best indication to others (outside the community) that they probably should try it when there is an opportunity.