In a real sense, Perl already is commercial software: it has a license that you can grab and carefully read to your manager. It is distributed in releases and comes in well-defined packages. There is a very large user community and an extensive literature. The comp.lang.perl.* newsgroups and several of the mailing lists provide free answers to your questions in near real-time. Perl has traditionally been supported by Larry, scores of software designers and developers, and myriad programmers, all working for free to create a useful thing to make life better for everyone.
However, these answers may not suffice for managers who require a purchase order from a company whom they can sue should anything go awry. Or maybe they need very serious hand-holding and contractual obligations. Shrink-wrapped CDs with Perl on them are available from several sources if that will help. For example, many Perl books include a distribution of Perl, as do the O'Reilly Perl Resource Kits (in both the Unix flavor and in the proprietary Microsoft flavor); the free Unix distributions also all come with Perl.
Alternatively, you can purchase commercial incidence based support through the Perl Clinic. The following is a commercial from them:
"The Perl Clinic is a commercial Perl support service operated by ActiveState Tool Corp. and The Ingram Group. The operators have many years of in-depth experience with Perl applications and Perl internals on a wide range of platforms.
"Through our group of highly experienced and well-trained support engineers, we will put our best effort into understanding your problem, providing an explanation of the situation, and a recommendation on how to proceed."
Contact The Perl Clinic at
www.PerlClinic.com
North America Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8)
Tel: 1 604 606-4611 hours 8am-6pm
Fax: 1 604 606-4640 Europe (GMT)
Tel: 00 44 1483 862814
Fax: 00 44 1483 862801See also www.perl.com for updates on tutorials, training, and support.