From:	Richard Dice	Date:	Thu Dec  9 10:29:45 2004
Subject:	Re: FW: The P5EE dream is alive, was: ping...

Perrin said:

> When we discussed this at The Perl Conference a few years back, it was 
> determined that the only thing everyone there really wanted out of it 
> was marketing, i.e. they want people to think of Perl as a valid option 
> for enterprise work.  You are welcome to propose another goal though.

This is my recollection from that discussion as well.

I think where it went next was a discussion of what it would take to 
make a marketing case for Perl as being appropriate for enterprise work. 
  My recollection of this is a bit more vague, but to reconstruct this 
as a composite of what was probably said plus my own opinions on the 
matter, it came down to two pieces:

  1. Marketing qua marketing -- i.e. getting a bazillion dollar budget to
     take out glossy ads in CIO Magazine and related.  Let me know when
     this happens. :-)

  2. Building a "P5EE Product" that can be marketed

As for (2.), I my 0-th order approximation of what is needed along these 
lines is

    * choose a set of CPAN modules that does what is needed (PNATTMBTC)
    * fill in the gaps as needed
    * subclass to a P5EE namespace
    * unify quirks in the calling API (i.e. the P5EE namespace has a
      bit of a translation layer to each individual module from a
      common-ish API, a la OpenPlugin)
    * make sure that the test suite for all the above is complete
    * do a license audit of everything here (i.e. probably make sure
      that everything is Perl Artistic)
    * having an easily-installable bundle, like a PAR
    * get a good set of docs both included and online for all this

Cheers,
Richard