Bath.pm March 12 Meeting Report

[Magnus Huckvale]

Since I have my laptop with me, I've decided to take some notes in an
effort to provoke some small discussion on the list.

 * Attendance
   - Magnus, Netcraft, nominal Chief of Bath.pm
   - Jez, CTO Netcraft
   - Andy, from Amtrak
   - Brian, AFFS (Asssociation for Free Software)
   - Richard Smedley, Future Publishing
   - Gary, J&G Web Design
   - Colin, from Netcraft
   - Amias, cft

 * Apologies
   - Pete
   - Jason
   - Jon

 * CFT Co-operative
   - Amias lets us all in on his master plan to form a co-operative of
Perl and web related freelancers
   - Magnus thinks this is a good idea, getting a long page of photos
and listing people's skills might help freelancers/contractors
   - Magnus asks if that is what Iterative is/was/will be

 * Wiki/Content Management
   - Magnus explains why Wiki is no good for his latest domain name

 * Perl 6
   - No-one sees the point in Perl 6 and we don't think it will take off
   - Amias 'kind of' sees the point
   - Richard points out that the vast legacy perl in CPAN could be the
biggest problem
   - Perhaps perl 6 will end up being used mostly in universities to
give the clever people there something to think about
   - Jez suggests that perl 6 is becoming a different languages and
should therefore have a different name
   - Magnus reckons that VB6 was probably more backwards compatible with
VB5 than Perl 6 and 5 will be
   - Gary asks what CPAN is

 * Imperial vs Metric measurements
   - After a brief discussion of what shape Ounces and Hectares are,
Magnus asks whether Perl is Imperial or Metric
   - Jez points out Perl is probably imperial as Perl 5 was written by
Americans
   - Magnus wonders if more European involvement in Perl6 means it will
be Metric

 * Jez points out my laptop runs XP
   - Short discussion about Microsoft licensing and whether or not it's
possible to get away with running Office XP with someone else's licence.
Time will tell.
   - Magnus suggests a Linux XP distribution
   - Amias suggests that Bath.pm notes should not be taken on closed
source software
   - Jez further points out that now everyone signed their name above
they've all been tainted

 * Richard S suggests a pub that serves food and beer for next time
   - The Porter would be nice but would be very busy
   - The Bell serves sandwiches but is a long way away
   - Magnus says if anyone wants to suggest other pubs they can


All in all, a very positive meeting.  Now we meet regularly perhaps
Bath.pm will find it easier to grow.

Magnus