Hello, Perl newsletter subscribers. It's that time of the fortnight again, when someone in all seriousness uses the word "fortnight" to describe something that happens every two weeks.

Here's what's new in the world of Perl.

* Perl News

Parrot 0.6.1 Released
Jerry Gay released Parrot 0.6.1 "Bird of Paradise." As usual, this release contains a new version of Rakudo -- Perl 6 on Parrot -- with additional features and goodness. Of course, the latest version available from Parrot SVN builds much faster and runs notably faster, but take heart. The next release is a few weeks away.

Work 1 Day Per Week on Rakudo
Long-time newsletter readers may remember that Vienna.pm hosted last summer's very successful YAPC::EU 2007. It was so successful that the Vienna Perl Mongers had thousands of Euros in profit to devote to Perl development, including funding a TODO bounty system for Perl 5. They've found another worthy target, and are sponsoring Parrot and Rakudo hacker Jonathan Worthington one day a week for the next three months. Expect to see much more OO support in Rakudo over the next few Parrot releases.

Summer of Code Update
Google has generously funded six Perl projects in its Summer of Code. Congratulations to the students and mentors (and yours truly faces the dilemma of ordering garbage collector books he probably won't ever read in full).

Dallas/Fort Worth Perl Mongers
If you're in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, head over to 1681 Firman Drive in Richardson on Tuesday night, April 29, to hear Rakudo pumpking Patrick Michaud talk about how Rakudo works and how to write actual, working Perl 6 code today.

mod_perl-2.0.4.tar.gz
mod_perl 2.0.4 is out -- this version works with the shiny new Perl 5.10.

YAPC::NA 2008 (Map)
YAPC::NA 2008 registration is open; come to Chicago this summer.

Perl Is not Going Away
Perlbuzz discussed the flaws in the TIOBE Index, thanks to Sterling Hanenkamp. Don't miss the comments; Tim Bunce and others presented contrary statistics.

Perl 5 Porters
David Landgren summarized the activities on Perl 5 Porters:
March 30 - April 5 and April 6-12

Perl 6 Design Meetings
Your editor minuted the Perl 6 design meetings:
April 16, 2008 and April 23, 2008

* Perl at O'Reilly

A Beginner's Introduction to Perl 5.10
Technologies grow in popularity by a steady stream of new users. Unfortunately, a language or library under active can't write one tutorial and coast along for years. Things change. Sometimes they even improve. Your editor has begun to revise the venerable "Beginners Introduction to Perl" articles on Perl.com, updating them with hard-won wisdom from the past eight years and including useful new features found only in Perl 5.10. Take away that grotty Perl 4 tutorial your co-workers think is the best thing ever. Here's how to write powerful, readable, modern Perl code.

US GSA Understands Open Source Software Value
Todd Ogasawara praised the US Government's General Services Administration for understanding the costs of F/OSS wisely.

Freeloading Adoption of F/OSS
Your editor suggested that using free software without contributing anything back is foolish in the long term and is, essentially, freeloading.

How Small Businesses Can Support Community-Driven Projects
... and praised small businesses (including the Rimm-Kaufman group) for supporting community-driven projects such as Perl.

Be Secure, and You'll Be Compliant
Nitesh Dhanjani argued that security is better than, and can lead to, compliance.

MySQL Is Not Simple
Andy Oram wondered if MySQL is as simple as some proponents claim.

memcached - Simple Works Best, Take Note Microsoft
Dustin Puryear found memcached effectively and surprisingly simple.

Vim Filters: Transforming Java to Perl
Curtis Poe programmed Vim to translate Java programs into Perl. Ouch.

Where's the Crossplatform -0.0 Knowledge?
Your editor longed for armies of BSD hackers to fix weird floating point bugs in cross platform projects.

Sic transit gloria dies quartuordecim. Next time -- more Perl 5.10 or something else.

Negative zero point zero?,

- c
chromatic
Editor, Perl.com, et al