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Gabor Szabo
Gabor Szabo

Posted on • Originally published at perlweekly.com

Perl Weekly #617 - The business risks of using CPAN

Originally published at Perl Weekly 617

Hi there,

You might know that I talk and write a lot about Open Source and I have a number of open source projects. Mostly web applications. One of them is the CPAN Digger where I try to analyze CPAN packages and point to directions for relatively easy improvement. The most basic one would be a link to the public VCS (Version Control System) of the project.

We have some historical data points with weekly reports. Around 80% of the recently uploaded distributions have a link to their VCS. It is not bad, but is still 20% less than would be ideal. I am less happy about the fact that only 50% use any CI to check their code before it is released to CPAN.

All this boils down to trying figure out the business risks of using Open Source 3rd party libraries in general and Perl modules in particular along with ways to alleviate them.

When you or your boss think about your Perl-based application, what are the things that make you worry? Do you bump into issues with modules that are not fixed? If you try to fix the issues, do you feel that it is hard to understand the code of the module?

What would make your life as a programmer using Perl easier? What would make your manager happier? Write a blog post. Comment on this issue or reply to me in private!

Enjoy your week!

--
Your editor: Gabor Szabo.

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(C) Copyright Gabor Szabo
The articles are copyright the respective authors.

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