Can a Software House make its tools using Perl?

The SANFACE Software experience

sanface@sanface.com

Why Perl?

• The initial Perl language selection was casual• With simple modifies our tools can become cgis

– http://www.sanface.com/createpdf.html – http://www.sanface.com/flash4/ferrari/

• Probably our tools are the only tools that can make PDFs on OS such as: OpenVMS, MPE, OS/390, EPOC, etc. in the same way on every OS

• Perl Dev Kit by ActiveState (http://www.activestate.com) and perl2exe by IndigoSTAR (http://www.indigostar.com)

Why perl?The future

• A generic GUI using perl/Tk

• Perl 6 news:– virtual machine – New ports?: we hope a possible support for

PDA, smartphone, etc.

Why shareware?

Four years ago the idea was innovative:

Not a library, not a PS to PDF converter.

A server tool that developers and project leaders can use like an external tool from every program on every OS.

We thought correct to earn for our work.

The market

• Our first customer was Alex project

• We thought the market of txt2pdf was to convert Electronic texts into PDFs

• Our real market: textual reports to PDFs:– The Halifax Herald Limited projects– The Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. project – Other projects

Is it possible to sell tools, distributing the source code?

• “You’re crazy!” (Italian friends :)

• License Agreement

• Some data:– We estimate more than 100,000 downloads– 600 customers– 95% located in US

A real open Perl comunity

• A software house can use Perl to develop (and sell) commercial tools

• A Perl software house can’t use Perl comunity to announce its products (Perl newsgroup, CPAN, etc.)

• We think that Perl comunity to grow up (like Linux comunity) needs a freeware core accepting commercial tools and parnerships

• We’d like other companies can follow our track with the help of Perl comunity

A real open Perl comunity

We hope this paper is just the first step!