“If the bloom is off the open source rose, somebody forgot
to tell the attendees at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention in
Monterey this week. With no Red Hat (RHAT) IPO to elevate the media
buzz and no bandwagon-jumping venture capitalists looking to be
parted from their money, this year’s conference still managed to
outdraw last year’s event. According to O’Reilly spokeswoman
Sara Winge, more than 1,900 people registered for the show compared
with 1,700 last year.”
“True to its roots — the convention began its life as the Perl
Conference four years ago — the Perl scripting language drew the
most attention. On Wednesday, Perl creator and keynote speaker
Larry Wall officially announced plans to overhaul the entire
language. Taking an Olympic year cue, Wall said the next version,
Perl 6 would be “better, stronger, faster” thanks to complete
ground-up rewrite of both internal and external components.”
“Perl 5 was my rewrite of Perl,” said Wall at a pre-keynote
meeting with top Perl hackers. (See more in Slashdot, “Larry Wall
announces Perl 6”). “I think this should be the community’s rewrite
of Perl, and the community’s rewrite of the community.”