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NVIDIA Donates $12,000 to The Perl and Raku Foundation

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The Perl and Raku Foundation (TPRF) is grateful to announce a gift of $12,000from NVIDIA in support of Perl and CPAN. Contributions like this one let uskeep maintaining the Perl 5 core and support our mission of keeping criticalinfrastructure alive.When you think of NVIDIA, you may think of GPUs and LLMs, so let’s highlight afew related projects with ties to the Perl and Raku communities.

Superpowers

The first project that springs to mind is Jesse Vincent’s Superpowers.

Superpowers is a complete software development methodology for your coding agents, built on top of a set of composable skills and some initial instructions that make sure your agent uses them.

While this is not written in Perl or Raku, Jesse was the Perl pumpking for versions 5.12 and 5.14 of the language. As his Wikipedia entry notes:

He changed the release cycle for Perl 5 from an irregular release done at theleisure of the project manager to a regular timeboxed release withdevelopment releases monthly and stable releases annually.

So the annual stable release cycle we now take for granted is largely thanks toJesse’s work.

PAAD

Ovid has been working on PAAD.

PAAD (rhymes with “pad”) is a set of skills for AI coding assistants. It reviews what the AI is about to work on the spec, the plan, the architecture, the code while you can still change it. That’s Pushback, Alignment, Architecture, plus the Discipline to actually run them.

Among other things, Ovid is the author of BeginningPerl. Youcan read more about Ovid in this perl.com interview by Mohammad SajidAnwar.

skilletor

Getty has been working on skilletor:

skilletor is a Claude Code and Codex plugin plus a standalone CLI. It installs skills, agents and rules from configured sources and keeps them up to date: it reconciles at session start, re-checks (throttled) during the session, pulls anything new, and tells the model what changed. Want shared skills? This is most likely the tool.

Getty has many Perl projects on the go, one of the more ambitious beingDBIO, a native relational mapper built on DBIand a modern successor to DBIx::Class.He also maintains Langertha:

Langertha provides a unified Perl interface for interacting with various Large Language Model (LLM) APIs. It abstracts away provider-specific differences, giving you a consistent API whether you’re using OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Ollama, Groq, Mistral, or other providers.

More of Getty’s tools can be found at Getty/marketplace.

Thank you, NVIDIA

Once again, we’d like to thank NVIDIA for supporting Perl and CPAN. If yourorganization relies on these ecosystems, you can supportTPRF or budget engineering timefor the shared infrastructure you already depend on.

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posted at: 12:00am on 30-Sep-2026
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Announcing the Perl Toolchain Summit 2027

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Since the end of the Perl Toolchain Summit in Vienna, at the end ofApril, the organizers have been busy wrapping up 2026, and preparing for2027. One of our main goals for this year is to be ready long before2027 has even started.And so today we’re happy to announce that the 17th Perl ToolchainSummit will be held in Lyon, France, from Thursday April 29 till SundayMay 2, 2027.This post is brought to you by The Perl and Raku Foundation,a recurring Diamond sponsor of the Perl Toolchain Summit. The Perl & Raku Foundation logo

Started in 2008 as the Perl QA Hackathon in Oslo, the Perl ToolchainSummit is an annual event that brings together the key developersworking on the Perl toolchain. Each year (except for 2020-2022), theevent moves from country to country all over Europe, organized by localteams of volunteers. The surplus money from previous summits helps fundthe next one.Since 2023, the organizing team is formally split between a “global”team and a “local” team (although this setup has been informallyused before).Our global team is made up of veteran PTS organizers, who deal withinvitations, finding sponsors, paying bills and communications. They areLaurent Boivin (ELBEHO), PhilippeBruhat (BOOK), Thibault Duponchelle(CONTRA), and Breno de Oliveira(GARU), supported by Les Mongueursde Perl’s bank account.This year, the local team is just Philippe, who lives near Lyon.This will be the fourth Perl Toolchain Summit held in the city,meaning we already have all the local stuff very well in hand.We’ll return to our usual venue there, a hotel in front of the trainstation and across the street from the airport shuttle, which has hostedthe Summit in 2017 and 2023 (and one Sunday in 2014).The developers who maintain CPAN and associated tools and services areall volunteers, scattered across the globe. This event is the one timein the year when they can get together.The summit provides dedicated time to work on the critical systemsand tools, with all the right people in the same room. The attendeeshammer out solutions to thorny problems and discuss new ideas to keepthe toolchain moving forward. We’re still working on the attendees listat the moment, and we expect 30 to 35 people to join us in Lyon next year.Given the important nature of the attendees’ work and their volunteerstatus, we try to pay for most expenses (travel, lodging, food, etc.)through sponsorship. Another goal for this year is to break even (we’vebeen running the summit at a loss for the past few years, using up ourtreasure chest). If you’re interested in helping sponsor the summit,please get in touch with the global team atpts2027@perltoolchainsummit.org.The Perl and Raku Foundation has beensponsoring the Perl Toolchain Summit for several years now, either viadirect financial contributions, or by funding travel for some of ourattendees. We are very grateful for their continued support.

The Perl and Raku Foundation is delighted to once again support thePerl Toolchain Summit as a Diamond Sponsor. The Summit brings togetherthe dedicated people who build and maintain the tools and infrastructurethe Perl community relies on every day. TPRF is proud to help give thesecontributors the time and space to work together, solve problems, andstrengthen the ecosystem for everyone. The Foundation looks forward toanother productive and inspiring Perl Toolchain Summit in 2027.

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posted at: 12:00am on 29-Sep-2026
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HeroDevs Donates $10,000 to The Perl and Raku Foundation

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The Perl and Raku Foundation is delighted to announce that HeroDevs has donated $10,000 to support our work. We’re grateful for their generosity gifts like this go directly toward the people and infrastructure that keep Perl and CPAN healthy.HeroDevs provides long-term security and support for open source software that has reached its end of life.As we continue to see support from community members and corporate sponsors,2026 has been shaping up to be a genuinely good year for Perl and CPAN.The CPAN Security Grouphas been very busy with security research, publishing CVEs and patching some of theexploits which they have found.Alpha-Omega funded thatwork,which was a solid vote of confidence in the ecosystem. The CPAN Security Group is also workingwith other packaging ecosystems to learn from their experiences fighting thesame battles. This is the kind of work that cannot be done solely byvolunteers. We would like to see it funded on an ongoing basis.Meanwhile, the ecosystem itself is growing. Comparing January to August 2026against the same period in2025,we can see significant growth in CPAN across multiple metrics. The first-timereleaser number is particularly encouraging. It’s great to see people decidingto publish on CPAN for the first time.

First-time releasers: 31 to 54, up 74%
New distributions: 464 to 1,007, more than double
Uploads: 6,276 to 9,430, up 50% already past last year’s full-year total with four months to go
Distinct authors releasing: 489 to 546, up 12%

Uploads	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug
2025	1,704	708	727	896	670	507	512	552
2026	1,189	866	1,430	1,190	919	1,052	1,368	1,416
Change	-30.2%	+22.3%	+96.7%	+32.8%	+37.2%	+107.5%	+167.2%	+156.5%

The in-person side has been busy as well. The Perl ToolchainSummitmet in beautiful Vienna, Austria in April to work on the infrastructure everyone dependson and nobody sees. The Perl and RakuConference ran in Greenville, South Carolinain June, and the London Perl & Raku Workshop is comingup in the UK at the end of November. Perl 5.44 also shipped in July theannual stable release, succeeding 5.42 (odd versions like 5.41 and 5.43 beingdevelopment-only).It has been a good year, but there’s plenty still to do and we need your help to do it.If your organization is interested in becoming a TPRF donor, please reach outto me. I’d be more than happy to set up acall so that we can discuss how a donor relationship with TPRF canbenefit your organization.

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posted at: 12:00am on 12-Sep-2026
path: /Programming/Perl | permalink | edit (requires password)

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Alpha-Omega Donates USD 250,000 for Perl and CPAN Security

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Photo: Stian Kristoffersen; Editing: Salve J. Nilsen. In picture, from left: Paul Johnson, Stig Palmquist, Leon Timmermans, Robert Rothenberg, Salve J. Nilsen, Timothy Legge, and Olaf Alders.CPAN Security Group (CPANSec) and The Perl and Raku Foundation (TPRF) are happy to announce the April Task Force. This project is set up to strengthen the CPANSec CNA Function, improve the security posture of CPAN and Perl, and to help prepare these communities for the impact expected from the general availability of security analysis-capable Large Language Models.The April Task Force is fiscally hosted by The Perl and Raku Foundation and backed by a USD 250,000.00 grant from Linux Foundation and OpenSSF through the Alpha-Omega project.This funding follows the September 2025 OpenSSF open letter and the wider recognition that the major package registries - CPAN among them - need structured investment to keep pace with commercial-scale use.

Scope and work

The task force will be focusing on:

Streamlining CVE processes and CNA function including workflow tooling for triage, creation, verification, and publishing
Vulnerability work measurable backlog reduction in core Perl, CPAN tooling, and critical distributions
Supply chain security improved CPAN maturity against the OpenSSF Principles for Package Repository Security
Long-term sustainability and funding of the Perl and CPAN security communities and ecosystem
Participation in and contribution to Alpha-Omega’s Security engineers-in-residence program, and cross-ecosystem forum for package registries

The team

Leon Timmermans Perl Steering Council member; Core Perl security, encryption-related modulesOlaf Alders MetaCPAN founder; CPAN publishing infrastructure, auditing CVE findings, maintainer outreach, patches development; Grant managerPaul Johnson Devel::Cover project lead; CPAN XS distributions, process automationRobert Rothenberg Long-term contributor to open source and Perl; Vulnerability research, CVE reporting, communication, triage workflowSalve J. Nilsen Long-term Perl community volunteer; Project facilitation, organizational design, policy, compliance and metadata, sustainabilityStig Palmquist Vulnerability research, exploit development, CNA processTimothy Legge Cybersecurity professional; CNA process, triage workflow, vulnerability research

Fiscal host: The Perl and Raku Foundation

The Perl and Raku Foundation has predominantly assumed a “hands-off” role in the Perl and Raku communities, following a “servant leadership” philosophy for supporting these.With this funding, the foundation for the first time puts on the mantle of a facilitator and fiscal host.This is both in recognition of the changing legislative landscape, where EU regulations like NIS2 and CRA will require businesses to secure their applications, services and products - and that these changes in this landscape are likely to affect the Open Source Software projects affected businesses rely on.While the core activities that make Open Source fun and worth doing should remain and be protected, there is new work laid before us. Some of it is necessary, but too tedious to attract volunteers.

A change in how Perl and CPAN Security can be supported

In their grant letter, the Linux Foundation state it succinctly.

Perl [is] among the most critical and widely-used projects in the open-source ecosystem, and any vulnerabilities therein would have a significant impact on The Linux Foundation’s members, and the public at large.

Every major commercial user of Perl is already paying for some version of this work. Internal teams monitor CPAN advisories, maintain private patches, respond to incidents under time pressure, and absorb the cost of unaddressed backlogs when something surfaces. Today, none of this shows up as a budget line item called “CPAN security”, even if the cost is real and being paid needlessly in parallel across the industry.The April Task Force provides a new opportunity to facilitate a “shift left” for cost-saving across the industry. To enable this, TPRF is establishing a mechanism for ongoing corporate sponsorship of this work; details will follow in the foundation’s revised fundraising goals.Furthermore, we are exploring novel funding mechanisms expected through the EU Cyber Resilience Act, to facilitate the support of Perl and CPAN projects and communities through offering compliance-relevant assurances.

How to engage

Report vulnerabilities through the CPAN Security Group.
Engage directly with the CPAN Security Group on enterprise concerns.
Allocate software engineering and security champion resources to OSS security work.
Prepare your budgets for sustained support of your digital infrastructure commons.

The digital commons Perl and CPAN are part of, and industry relies on, cannot thrive on bystanders. Industry engagement is key both for its own long-term security posture, and for society at large.

About the CPAN Security Group

The CPAN Security Group (CPANSec) is a group of volunteers from the Perl community who work to support the security of the Perl ecosystem through education and outreach, security analysis of open source Perl distributions on CPAN, and support for fixing security vulnerabilities. CPANSec was founded at the Perl Toolchain Summit 2023 in Lyon.

About the Perl and Raku Foundation

The Perl and Raku Foundation (TPRF) is a volunteer-led 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to advancing the Perl and Raku programming languages. The foundation provides financial, legal, and organizational stewardship that keeps both languages freely available and actively developed funding core maintenance and development grants, producing community conferences, and supporting shared infrastructure and user groups.

Links

CPAN Security Group: https://security.metacpan.org
The Perl and Raku Foundation: https://www.perlfoundation.org
September 2025 OpenSSF open letter: https://openssf.org/blog/2025/09/23/open-infrastructure-is-not-free-a-joint-statement-on-sustainable-stewardship/
Alpha-Omega: https://alpha-omega.dev