--- Simon Cozens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Austin Hastings) writes: > > Yeah, but ActiveState does Perl, and Microsoft owns ActiveState > > To what extent are *either* of those statements true? :)
Hmm. Well, last time I checked you could still download a perl binary from ActiveState.com. And, in fact, check out the motivation behind the "agreement": http://www.dnjonline.com/newsreel/index.html Microsoft buys into Perl Aug 6 - Microsoft has hired ActiveState Tool Corporation to improve the Windows functionality of the Open Source scripting language Perl. This agreement reinforces a long-term relationship between Microsoft and Perl, stemming from 1993 when Microsoft funded the first port of Perl 5 to the Windows platform. ActiveState develops and distributes the popular Windows version, called ActivePerl. "Our mission is to make Perl as popular as possible," said Dick Hardt, chief executive of ActiveState. The monetary details of the deal weren't revealed - in fact there was no mention of it anywhere on the Microsoft web site. Instead the impetous seems to have come from Microsoft India where the main aim is to improve Perl's support for non-Roman character-sets through Unicode. As part of the agreement, ActiveState will add features previously missing from Windows ports of Perl, as well as full support for Unicode - a key feature to users dealing with Asian character sets. .... blah blah blah ... =Austin __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search new jobs daily now http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/