Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 09:47:40 -0800 (PST)
From: Sara Winge <sara@oreilly.com>
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject: ActiveState Releases ActivePerl 5.6

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 28, 2000 
CONTACT: Lori Pike, Director, Corporate Communications, 604.713.8433,
LoriP@ActiveState.com

ACTIVESTATE RELEASES ACTIVEPERL 5.6 TO THE COMMUNITY
Now available for Linux and Solaris

VANCOUVER, BC  MARCH 28, 2000--ActiveState, a leading supplier of
products and services supporting Open Source Software, announced today
that ActivePerl 5.6 is now available for download.  ActivePerl 5.6 is
ActiveState's value added, binary distribution of Perl for the
Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems, which is now faster,
easier to install and offers more support for Web developers.  Copies
can be downloaded for free from www.ActiveState.com.

"ActivePerl 5.6 is both more powerful and easier to use.  Thus we're
expecting an increase in the already substantial number of downloads
from last year, which totaled 4.5 million," stated Dick Hardt, CEO,
ActiveState.  "We are committed to the evolution of and broadening the
appeal of core Open Source Perl and Python technologies.  This
distribution, in addition to our commercially supported solutions,
melds the advantages of Open Source's innovations and commercial
software's quality assurance for Web professionals."

"I believe the ActivePerl 5.6 release marks a new level of productivity
for Perl users on Linux, Solaris and Windows," stated Gurusamy Sarathy,
Senior Developer, ActiveState and ActivePerl 5.6 Release Manager.  "We
have worked very hard to give users everything they're going to need.
And when I say 'everything', I mean everything.  Some of these major
features include:  beginnings of support for Unicode, ability to run
concurrent interpreters, better 64-bit and large filesystem support,
new regular expression constructs, and tutorials on various subjects.
Plus Windows users will have increased compatibility with CPAN
extensions, Windows 2000 installation support, and access to native
Unicode functionality in Windows NT and 2000 environments."

Benefits of ActivePerl 5.6:
* Cross platform.  Available on Windows, Linux and Solaris platforms.
* Installation is faster with the binary build.
* Documentation is in html and is easily accessible.
* Modules are easily installed, removed, and upgraded with the Perl
Package Manager (PPM).
* Fast.  Runs CGI scripts with IIS and is up to 48x quicker.

"Perl has been a huge underground success story," said Tim O'Reilly,
CEO of O'Reilly & Associates.  "But the lack of standardized support
and distribution limits its availability to many of those who could
benefit from it.  ActiveState's ActivePerl 5.6 makes Perl accessible at
a whole new level."

About ActiveState:
ActiveState is at the forefront of Open Source providing products for
all popular Operating Systems including Windows, Linux and Solaris.
ActiveState's key technology platforms are Perl, the Internet's most
popular Open Source programming language and Python, a user-friendly
Open Source scripting language.

About Perl:
Perl has long been the most popular Web programming language and is
currently used by companies such as Amazon.com, MP3.com, and Deja.com
to run their Websites.  Perl is an interpretive language, which makes
it easy to build and test simple programs.  Perl is also robust enough
to allow for the creation of complex programs.  Because Perl is
extremely useful in "gluing" together smaller programs into larger
applications, it has often been referred to as "the duct tape of the
Internet."

Due to its strong text processing abilities, Perl has become one of the
most popular languages for building Internet applications and is
currently used by over one million programmers worldwide.  With the
Internet as the standard medium for the transfer of business
information, Perl is an integral part of web developers, administrators
and system administrators' tools on Linux, UNIX and Windows platforms.

                           ###

For more information, media please contact:

Lori Pike
Director, Corporate Communications
604.713.8433
LoriP@ActiveState.com

Dick Hardt
CEO
604.606.4686
DickH@ActiveState.com

C ActiveState Tool Corp 2000.

ActivePerl is a trademark of ActiveState Tool Corp.  All other names
mentioned herein may be trademarks and registered trademarks of their
respective organizations.