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The Rise and Fall of The Perl Institute
- Following the runaway success and royalties of my books, I wanted to take some of my "runaway money" and find a way to give back to the Perl community.
- In 1996, on the advice of a friend, I founded "The Perl Institute" (TPI) as a non-profit organization.
- I put my friend mostly in charge of running the operations. In retrospect, that was probably a mistake.
- Unfortunately, the organization did not manage to accomplish much of its initial mission, and we eventually made the decision to dissolve the non-profit.
- However, by the time we wound down operations, I had personally given up six figures worth of my own personal assets to fund it.
- This taught me a very valuable life lesson: "Try not to lose six figures of assets more than a few times in a lifetime!"
- Fortunately, The Perl Foundation eventually stepped in to take over this community stewardship role, and they have done a much, much better job than TPI ever did.
These facts are as Randal recalls them, but much time has passed for most of this. If you find a factual error, please email realmerlyn@gmail.com.