Perhaps that's something for companies to consider. Every place I've worked, large and small, has had some Perl working away in the background in some capacity - from humble one-off tasks like formatting the odd bit of text through to being the driver for the automated test framework or managing the corporate web infrastructure.

We seem all too willing to throw money at licenses for Office, but my team uses Perl in many interesting, fun and labour saving ways every single day - even though ostensibly we're coding in C. I think I might make a case to my manager on Monday that a small donation has *already* paid for itself ...