Google Summer of Code 2008 Wrap Up written by Eric Wilhelm: Google's Summer of Code 2008 is wrapping up now and I'm very pleased with how well The Perl Foundation's students and mentors have done. The five projects which survived the halfway point have all finished with great results. Many thanks to all of the mentors and students as well as everyone in the community who helped or supported the

Our colleagues, the organizers of the Pittsburgh Perl Workshop, asked us to help get the word out about PPW and to remind people that they are currently accepting talk proposals, up until September 12. You can get more details on their web site at "http://pghpw.org/ppw2008/":http://pghpw.org/ppw2008/ This will be the third year of the event. The past 2 years it has shown itself to be an exceptional and fun Perl gathering.

This is the final report for the Smolder grant, by Michael Peters: Here are the original deliverables from my grant proposal: Remove custom XML format in favor of using plain TAP and TAPx::Parser. Extend Smolder to handle small CPAN style modules more easily and automatically. Setup a Smolder server for the CGI::Application community to serve as a testing ground and public display for their 110+ CPAN modules. Add per-project and

Christopher Laco on Mango Grant: It has been over two years since I received a grant from the TPF to start work on Mango. What started as a fast paced 3 month project has turned into a 2 year project that has come to crawl. At this point in time, the TPF and I agree that it is best to label this project as 'done as-is' so the grant manager

This is the third biweekly report. These are the news on currently running grants: Mango Christopher Laco This grant will be closed in the next few days, and a report published here. Porting PyYAML to Perl Ingy döt Net Ingy gave some updates on his grant. YAML::XS is completed, and a pure Perl implementation is being started. A new deadline was defined: Christmas 2008. Improving Smolder Michael Peters As said

Apologies for the long delay in this report, I've had some ongoing health problems over the summer. Allison wrote this report to bring us up-to-date, and then we'll continue with the two-monthly schedule. Parrot releases continue on their monthly schedule. The 0.6.0 release in March reflected major improvements to both the Parrot VM and the Perl 6 implementation on Parrot The most notable change for Parrot was the implementation of

Unfortunately TPF is unable to fund all the proposed grants as they exceed the funds available for Grants. Thus, TPF GC ranked proposals accordingly with its relevance to the community, and the first few were funded. These are the funded proposals: "Perl cross-compilation for linux and wince":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/08/2008q3_grant_proposal_perl_cro.html "Barcode support in Act":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/08/2008q3_grant_proposal_barcode.html "Tcl/Tk access for Rakudo":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/08/2008q3_grant_proposal_tcltk_ac.html "Embedding perl into C++ applications":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/08/2008q3_grant_proposal_libperl.html "Extending BSDPAN":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/08/2008q3_grant_proposal_extendin.html Follow the proposals that, although accepted, will not

Hi. This is the second biweekly report for August. These are the news on the running grants: Mango Christopher Laco No updates/feedback. Porting PyYAML to Perl Ingy döt Net No updates/feedback. Improving Smolder Michael Peters No updates. Still waiting for a conclusion report. Perl on a Stick Adam Kennedy Accordingly with Adam's blog "I'm happy to report that phase 2 of the Perl on a Stick grant is now completed."

The following statement was written by Roberta Cairney, councel to The Perl Foundation. The Perl Foundation has participated in the Jacobsen v. Katzer amicus brief as the license in dispute, Artistic 1.0, is very popular in the Perl community and is one of the licenses under which Perl 5 is released. A decision was rendered on August 13, 2008 in the Jacobsen v. Katzer case by the U.S. Court of

Starting this month, the Grant Committee will publish reports about running grants each two weeks While it is normal that not all grants have updates they will appear in the listing as well with a 'no updates' message. Currently running TPF grants are: "Mango":http://www.perlfoundation.org/christopher_laco_mango Christopher Laco No updates. "Porting PyYAML to Perl":http://www.perlfoundation.org/ingy_dot_net_port_pyyaml_to_perl Ingy döt Net No updates. "Improving Smolder":http://www.perlfoundation.org/michael_peters_improving_smolder Michael Peters Grant is finished. A final report should be published

To this post follows a set of posts with proposals received by the Perl Foundation grants committee during the third call for grant proposals for 2008. This worked pretty well on previous round, and thus, we are using the same approach now. These proposals are published here for public discussion. You are invited to comment each proposal about its relevance and objectives. During the month of July we received the

Author Hinrik Örn Sigurðsson Title Improve POE::Component::IRC Synopsis: I will improve POE::Component::IRC by overhauling its test suite, adding more features, fixing bugs and writing more documentation. Author Hinrik Örn Sigurðsson, hinrik.sig@gmail.com Title Improve POE::Component::IRC Synopsis I will improve POE::Component::IRC by overhauling its test suite, adding more features, fixing bugs and writing more documentation. Benefits PoCo::IRC is the most modern IRC client module for Perl out there. It is used for

Author: Colin Smith Title: Extending BSDPAN Synopsis: Refactor the BSDPAN module into a generic and extensible solution for bridging CPAN with UNIX packaging systems. Author Colin Smith Title Extending BSDPAN Synopsis Refactor the BSDPAN module into a generic and extensible solution for bridging CPAN with UNIX packaging systems. Benefits to the Perl Community The wealth of freely available code CPAN represents is one of the Perl language's greatest strengths. Tighter

Author: Vadim Konovalov Title: Perl cross-compilation for linux and wince Synopsis: Right now cross-compilation is largerly incomplete. The proposal is to develop current cross-compiling of perl into the normal quality stage. Author Vadim Konovalov Title Perl cross-compilation for linux and wince Synopsis Right now cross-compilation is largerly incomplete. The proposal is to develop current cross-compiling of perl into the normal quality stage. Benefits to the Perl Community From time to

Author: Vadim Konovalov Title: Tcl/Tk access for Rakudo Synopsis: Implement Tk GUI interface for Rakudo. Author Vadim Konovalov Project Title Tcl/Tk access for Rakudo Synopsis Implement Tk GUI interface for Rakudo. Benefits to the Perl Community Powerful console-based utility is useful, but it becomes much more attractive when it has ability to easily create interfaces, so demos and screenshots will be better looking. Given that Tk 8.5 as compared to

Author: Andrew Shitov Title: Barcode support in Act Synopsis: Integrate a set of tools into A Conference Toolkit that will allow on-site registration with barcodes. Name Andrew Shitov Project Title Barcode support in Act Synopsis Integrate a set of tools into A Conference Toolkit that will allow on-site registration with barcodes. Benefits to the Perl Community Using barcodes during the registration process allows speeding up on-site registration at Perl workshops

Author: Kieren Diment Title: The Perl Survey From "Pilot" to Production Synopsis: In 2007 Kirrily Robert organised and administered the Perl survey to provide a snapshot of the Perl community. In particular she made significant effort to recruit as many people as possible, resulting in a sample size of around 4500 responses Author Kieren Diment Project Title The Perl Survey From "Pilot" to Production Synopsis In 2007 Kirrily Robert organised

Authors: Igor Sanchez-Puls and Rene Sanchez-Puls Title: Rufus Synopsis: Build a preprocessor for PASM and a language with PASM like syntax Name Igor Sanchez-Puls and Rene Sanchez-Puls Project Title Rufus Synopsis Build a preprocessor for PASM and a language with PASM like syntax Benefits to the Perl Community A nice approach "bottom-up" from PASM and tools for making easier PASM programming. Deliverables A PASM preprocessor "Rufus preprocessor" and a "Rufus

Author: John Beppu Title: Squatting On Everything Synopsis: Squatting is unique among web frameworks, because it has the ability to embed itself into other frameworks. This ability has been demonstrated with the Squatting::On::Catalyst module that shows that you can take a whole Squatting application and embed it directly into a Catalyst application. I'd like to expand Squatting's range by writing adapters for more frameworks and environments. Author John Beppu Title

Author: Michael G Schwern Title: CPAN Stability Project Synopsis: The CPAN Stability Project is intended to improve the usability of CPAN over long term use by providing a way to choose between safe releases vs newest releases as well as to better guarantee that upgrading will not break anything. It draws heavily on Debian's release management and tiers Name Michael G Schwern Title CPAN Stability Project Synopsis The CPAN Stability

Author: Michael G Schwern Title: Module Authoring Documentation Synopsis: Write documentation targeted specifically at Perl module authors using both Module::Build and MakeMaker. This includes basic authoring tutorials, information about XS and a cookbook for advanced issues. Specifically separate the documentation to address the different concerns. Also complete the author API documentation of both Module::Build and MakeMaker. Separate basic and advanced API information for easier reading. Author Michael G Schwern Title

Author: Vadim Konovalov Title: single-file GUI-enabled executable for Windows and then for Linux w/o temporaries and dependencies Synopsis: Proposal is to make a distribution of Perl program with a single-file executable much like PAR approach but without any temporaries, thus having existing filesystem untouched in any way. This executable will include Tcl/Tk into it and all Perl and Tcl/Tk core scripts will be inside this executable and will be unpacked

Author: Cristina Nunes Title: Hotel Perl Synopsis: A website where Perl mongers can: register and submit their vacant space to receive other Perl mongers traveling; search for a place to stay at another Perl monger's; announce they're looking for a place to stay at a given city/country Benefits to the Perl Community Better interaction between Perl mongers. Cut expenses when attending Perl events like conferences, workshops and/or social/technical monger meetings.

Author: Leon Timmermans Title: Libperl++ Synopsis: Currently embedding perl is too complicated. The API requires too much knowledge of internals to use and is too incompatible with other libraries Therefore I've started a project to ease the embedding of Perl. Though the code works, it is not ready for public consumption yet. In this proposal I want to make it ready for widespread adoption. Author Leon Timmermans Title Libperl++ Synopsis

Authors: John Beppu and Pip Stuart Title: Bavl Synopsis: Bavl is a Free web application for collaboratively learning how to comprehend speak foreign languages. At its core, it is a system for searching through a database of words, phrases, or lessons each accompanied by translations. However, instead of just presenting mere text back, each phrase also can have one or more audio recordings associated with it. This will let people

For ten years the Perl community has made it a point to recognize the many significant contributions made by the unsung heros of Perl. These volunteers often work behind the scenes, serving the community and contributing to the ongoing success of Perl. The White Camel award is intended to honor those who make noteworthy and ongoing non-technical contributions in benefit of the Perl community. This year we have three White

I wanted to post a quick thanks to the folks helping out with the TPF booth this year. So thanks to ben hengst Jeff Lavallee, Uri, Josh, and all the other folks who took some time to make sure people got answers to their Perl questions. Jeff is a local and actually got permission from his manager to come down for just the day and man the booth.

As "reported recently":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/07/perl_on_a_stick_grant_update.html, Adam has made progress with his Perl on a Stick project. In fact, he's made enough progress that we're able to offer 1G USB drives loaded with "Strawberry Perl":http://strawberryperl.com/ here at OSCON for $15. We have them at the TPF Booth, so stop by and get one.

The Perl Foundation is at OSCON, so come join us. We'll be in the "Expo Hall":http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/content/expo-hall and we'll have some Perl items at the booth. If you'd like to help out and staff the booth, stop by or "sign up":http://oscon.kwiki.org/index.cgi?PerlFoundationBooth on the wiki. Look forward to seeing you.

You can find on use.perl some updates on Adam Kennedy Perl on a Stick grant. Quoting: This is the first release of Strawberry Perl Portable Edition for Mobile Devices and Flash Drives Firstly, please note this is extremely alpha. In fact it's SO alpha that it's basically just whatever is on my test flash drive, zipped up with no packaging at all. To install, simply unzip it absolutely anywhere you

The Perl Foundation is looking at giving some grants ranging from $500 to $3000 in August 2008. In the past, we've supported Adam Kennedy's PPI and Strawberry Perl, Nicholas Clark's work on Perl internals, Jouke Visser's pVoice, Chris Dolan on Perl::Critic and many others http://www.perlfoundation.org/grants for more references>. You don't have to have a large, complex, or lengthy project. You don't even have to be a Perl master or

The Perl Foundation is happy to announce the returning of the Yet Another Perl Conference to it's origin for 2009. The Perl Foundation Conferences Committee has chosen Pittsburgh as the venue for the next North American YAPC. As has been a trend for the past few years, the votes were very close. We had two great bids from Pittsburgh and Columbus. As many know, 2009 marks 10 years of YAPC

Thanks to Karen and Marty Pauley, we now have a "Plagger site":http://planet.yapc.org set up aggregating yapc feeds. Give it a shot and let me know if we're not picking up your blog.

As you may remember, this year we changed the YAPC::NA bidding process up a bit. We "moved everything up a few months":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/03/yapcna_2009_call_for_venue.html and will make an announcement during the closing ceremonies at this year's YAPC::NA in Chicago as to where the 2009 YAPC::NA will be held. If you'd like to offer any feedback or thoughts on the new process, please feel free to contact me fluhmann at perlfoundation dot org

Here is Pittsburgh.pm's bid for hosting YAPC::NA 2009 YAPC 2009 Proposal Pittsburgh Perl Mongers In 1999, the first ever Yet Another Perl Conference was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and hosted by Perl Monger Kevin Lenzo. In the past ten years, YAPC has flourished into a world-wide craze. But little did everybody realize that back when Kevin started it all, he implanted a very small homing beacon in the conference. Now,

Here is Columbus.pm's bid for hosting YAPC::NA 2009 NAME YAPC::NA::2009 Columbus.pm Bid DESCRIPTION Overview In 2006 Columbus was ranked as the United States 15th largest city, with 733,203 residents, and is the country's 32nd largest metropolitan area. Located with Columbus is the world renowned Ohio State University. OSU is currently the largest university in the nation and is ranked within the top 60 best universities in the country. All around

The Call For Venue is closed and we received 2 bids for hosting YAPC::NA 2009. A rebid from Columbus.pm to try and bring it to their town in 2009, and a bid from Pittsburgh.pm to try for an anniversary back where it all started. I'll be posting the bids shortly. The Conferences Committee is in the process of reviewing and voting on the bids.

The 2008Q2 grant round was by far the largest in recent years in both the quantity and quality of grant requests received by TPF. Characterisitically, TPF authorizes about US$5,000 of grant funding per quarter. In 2008Q2 we received nearly US$45,000 in grant requests. We see this as both a positive thing and a problem. The positive part is that it shows some great activity in the Perl community and people

It took a long time, but for this round we had a big number of excellent proposals. Unfortunately TPF is unable to fund all the proposed grants as they exceed the funds available for Grants. Thus, TPF GC ranked proposals accordingly with its relevance to the community, and the first few were funded. These are the funded proposals: "Perl on a Stick":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/05/2008q2_grant_proposal_perl_on.html, by Adam Kennedy "Test::Builder 2":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/05/2008q2_grant_proposal_testbuil.html, by Michael Schwern

On May 14, 2008, The Perl Foundation received a philanthropic donation of US$200,000 from Ian Hague. Mr. Hague is a co-founder of Firebird Management LLC a financial fund management company based in New York City. This donation was the result of extensive discussions between Mr. Hague, The Perl Foundation and a Perl community member who wishes to remain anonymous. The purpose of the donation is to support the development of

This is a reminder that the YAPC::NA 2009 "Call for Venue":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/03/yapcna_2009_call_for_venue.html will be closing in less than a month. If you plan on trying to host YAPC::NA 2009 and you haven't started on your bid, you'd better get to it! The deadline for submissions this year is June 1st

In July 2007, TPF granted Shlomi Fish for a Perl-Based Mediawiki Syntax Parser. Both parties have agreed to terminate this grant agreement. This will free up Shlomi to work on other projects, and allow the Perl Foundation to use the money to fund future grants.

To this post follows a set of posts with proposals received by the Perl Foundation grants committee during the second call for grant proposals for 2008. Although not usual, the rules of the TPF GC are changing and we hope to make this a rule. Proposals are accepted during one month and after that period, they are posted for public discussion on the Internet. This is important to make GC

Name: Alan Haggai Alavi Title: Fixing Bugs in the Archive::Zip Perl Module Synopsis: Perl programs often need to manipulate .zip files. Archive::Zip is a Perl module that allows a Perl program to manage Zip archive files without calling an external utility. The Archive::Zip module, however, has some bugs which prevent it from generating fully-portable .zip files, that are handled correctly by all .zip file readers and manipulators. The project's main

Name: Paul Cain Title: CatalystX::Installer A generic GUI deployment for catalyst applications Synopsis: Create a web application that provides a cross-platform generic GUI for setting up Catalyst applications. There is no command line version of this program since anyone who wants to use the command line can just edit the configuration files directly. Name: Paul Cain Title: CatalystX::Installer A generic GUI deployment for catalyst applications Synopsis: Create a web application

Name: Kieren Diment Project Title: The Perl Survey From "Pilot" to Production Synopsis: In 2007 Kirrily Robert organised and administered the Perl survey to provide a snapshot of the Perl community. In particular she made significant effort to recruit as many people as possible, resulting in a sample size of around 4500 responses. While an excellent start for a design for a survey instrument, it can be improved in a

Name: Eric Wilhelm Title: svn.cpan.org revision control for all of CPAN Synopsis: This project will create a universally addressable Subversion space for the Perl community. It will be populated with historical and ongoing CPAN releases. Every CPAN author will be given a public version control repository, and may use a portion of it for any purpose. Alternate views, such as mappings for each distribution, will be handled via the http

Author: Hinrik Örn Sigurðsson Title: Improve POE::Component::IRC Synopsis: I will improve POE::Component::IRC by overhauling its test suite, adding more features, fixing bugs and writing more documentation. AUTHOR: Hinrik Örn Sigurðsson NAME: Improve POE::Component::IRC SYNOPSIS: I will improve POE::Component::IRC by overhauling its test suite, adding more features, fixing bugs and writing more documentation. BENEFITS: PoCo::IRC is the most modern IRC client module for Perl out there. It is used for many

Name: Grant Grueninger Project Title: DBEditor Synopsis: DBEditor implements a CGI-based database editor. It allows you to very quickly implement a basic table editor by simply stating table data in configuration files Name: Grant Grueninger Project Title: DBEditor Synopsis: DBEditor implements a CGI-based database editor. It allows you to very quickly implement a basic table editor by simply stating table data in configuration files Set up your database config info:

Name: Colin Smith Title: Extending BSDPAN Synopsis: Refactor the BSDPAN module into a generic and extensible solution for bridging CPAN with UNIX packaging systems. Name: Colin Smith Title: Extending BSDPAN Synopsis: Refactor the BSDPAN module into a generic and extensible solution for bridging CPAN with UNIX packaging systems. Benefits to the Perl Community: The wealth of freely available code CPAN represents is one of the Perl language's greatest strengths. Tighter