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What's wrong with ActiveState? (was: Is this a dream or a nightmare? (Was Re: XML))

Cameron Laird claird at starbase.neosoft.com
Mon Oct 9 12:07:53 EDT 2000 
In article <MqLD5.1338$G5.25319 at read1.centurytel.net>,
Frank Sergeant <frank at canyon-medical.com> wrote:
>
>"David T. Grove" <pete at petes-place.com> wrote in message
>news:39def2ae.8929692 at news.davesworld.net...
>
>David, I enjoyed your rant about ActiveState in this post and in the
>interview with "Pete" on the www.CodeMagicCD.com web site.  It had always
>annoyed me that ActiveState allowed one to download only a
>non-redistributable "distribution" of Perl.  I feared (and I believe it has
>been realized) they would take Python in the same direction.
			.
			.
			.
I'm not getting it.

David T. Grove, at several points in this thread, has warned
against the ActiveState disease.  I have a definite impression
that he has strong emotions about this, but not what the sub-
stance behind them is.  I'm sufficiently curious to ask for
details.

I think the accusation is some combination of:
1.  ActiveState is technically incompetent:  it
    promises VisualPerl, but doesn't deliver it
    on schedule;
2.  ActiveState is morally flawed:  it lays off
    programmers;
3.  ActiveState impedes Perl development by buy-
    ing off P5P (roughly, the Perl maintenance
    crew) members to distort their decisions
    and/or advertising deceptively about its
    schedule for releasing new source into the
    core distribution;
4.  ActiveState is impure for some combination
    of selling a Perl distribution, allowing
    people to believe that Win!Perl is available
    only from ActiveState, and/or polluting
    ActivePerl with Microsoft-oriented goop.

Do I have that right?  

The Pete interview mentioned above is, I believe, the one at
<URL:http://www.codemagiccd.com/interview-pete.html>.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
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