Perl Community Conference Principles & Perl Scout Law

PRINCIPLES · PERL SCOUT LAW

Practice being the person you want to work with.

A virtue is a good habit. We build it by practicing: telling the truth, listening, keeping promises, helping someone learn, and admitting when we are wrong. Nobody arrives perfect. The aim is to become better. Every person has dignity before writing a line of code; skill, credentials, income, and productivity do not determine anyone’s human worth.

Conduct

Why virtues instead of a giant rulebook?

Thousands of pages of conduct rules still cannot describe every situation people will meet. We believe people work better together when they practice good judgment and good habits, rather than hunt for a rule or a loophole. A rule can tell us what to do in one case; a virtue helps us decide what is right in a new one.

Our approach starts with individual improvement and self-moderation: pause, examine your own choices, and correct yourself. Start with “What should I do better?” rather than “How can I catch someone else doing wrong?”

Three virtues, in everyday language

1. Practical Wisdom: think before you act.

Understand the problem, consider the people affected, and choose a useful response. Ask a question before assuming the worst. Explain a difficult idea in a way your listener can understand. Make work easier without cutting corners that hurt someone else.

Keep the balance: neither rush blindly nor spend forever planning something that never gets done. Add diligence: follow through on the good choice.

2. Spiritedness: care enough to help.

Bring energy and courage to useful work. Fix a bug, share a discovery, welcome a newcomer, or speak honestly about a problem. Strong opinions can help us learn when we explain them with reasons and listen in return.

Keep the balance: neither shrug at problems nor turn disagreement into a fight. Add patience: direct your energy toward solving the problem, without humiliating the person beside you.

3. Good Order: leave things better for the next person.

Keep promises, give credit, look after shared spaces, and make your work understandable. At a conference, that can mean finishing your talk on time, making room for questions, and helping the next speaker get ready. In software, it can mean clear documentation and a fix someone else can maintain. Shared tools carry the work of real people: respect their authorship, licenses, time, and responsibilities.

Keep the balance: neither neglect responsibilities nor make so much process that useful work becomes impossible. Add humility: accept correction and remember that someone else may have a better idea.

A simple test: good, harmful, or neutral?

Before speaking or acting, ask:

Is it wise? Am I being truthful and considering the consequences?
Is my energy helping? Am I trying to improve something, or just win?
Does it leave things in good order? Am I respecting other people, their work, and our shared time? Do the tools and processes serve the people who must live with them?

A choice that serves these goods is worth practicing. A choice that harms them needs changing. Some choices are simply neutral: preferring a different editor, asking a basic question, or having a different taste is not a fault. Consider the purpose, circumstances, and effects; disagreement alone does not make someone bad.

When you get it wrong

Stop, listen, acknowledge what happened, apologize when needed, and repair what you can. Then try again. Good intentions do not erase harmful effects, and practicing self-moderation does not mean leaving someone else to handle a problem alone. Ask a conference organizer for help when you need it.

The goal is growth, not a claim of perfection. These virtues are tools for improving ourselves and working well together. They are not a scorecard for ranking people or a reason to shame someone.

The Perl Scout Law

We use the same twelve points, in the same order, as the BSA Scout Law: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent. The descriptions below apply those points to our lives as Perl programmers, teachers, researchers, maintainers, and colleagues.

These points express and support our three Perl virtues: Practical Wisdom, Spiritedness, and Good Order. Each point names a practical habit and connects it to those foundations. The connections overlap: diligence puts wisdom to work, patience steadies spiritedness, and humility keeps order open to correction.

A Perl community member strives to be:

Trustworthy.Tell the truth, keep promises, give proper credit, and describe your work and its limitations honestly. People should be able to rely on your word as well as your code.Practical Wisdom — Sound judgment and useful cooperation begin with truth.
Loyal.Stand by your family, colleagues, and the communities whose trust you accept. Care for the work entrusted to you. Loyalty includes honest correction when someone or something you care about is going wrong.Good Order — Faithful commitments build trust; loyalty serves what is good rather than concealing wrongdoing.
Helpful.Use your abilities to meet real needs. Share knowledge, help a newcomer, fix a problem, and offer service without always looking for personal credit.Spiritedness — Turn care into useful action for another person.
Friendly.Offer friendship and welcome people into the craft. Treat apprentice and master with equal human dignity, and make room for people whose experience or background differs from yours.Good Order — Good relationships make shared learning and work possible.
Courteous.Listen, give others time to speak, and disagree with reasons rather than insults. Correct mistakes without humiliating the person who made them.Good Order — Consideration keeps discussion and collaboration useful.
Kind.Attend to the person behind the question, mistake, or missed deadline. Be patient with difficulties you may not see, offer help where you can, and avoid cruelty in speech and action.Practical Wisdom — Good judgment considers human needs and consequences, not just technical outcomes.
Obedient.Honor just laws, legitimate authority, and the responsibilities you freely accept. Respect agreed conference arrangements, licenses, and the rights of others. If an instruction is unjust or would require wrongdoing, raise the concern honestly and seek a just resolution.Good Order — Responsible cooperation requires discipline guided by truth and justice, rather than blind submission.
Cheerful.Meet useful work with a willing spirit. Encourage others, keep perspective when plans fail, and help make difficult tasks bearable. Cheerfulness leaves room for grief, fatigue, and honest requests for help.Spiritedness — Hopeful, patient energy sustains effort without demanding a performance of happiness.
Thrifty.Use time, money, equipment, and shared resources carefully. Avoid waste, preserve useful work, and choose tools suited to the need. Practice thrift with your own resources without using it to excuse unfair pay or neglect.Practical Wisdom — Spend and conserve wisely so resources serve lasting human goods.
Brave.Speak truthfully, admit mistakes, and face difficult work even when you feel afraid. Defend someone being mistreated and challenge harmful practices without turning courage into aggression.Spiritedness — Courage directs strength toward what is right, with patience and restraint.
Clean.Care for your body, your surroundings, and the spaces and systems you share. Keep speech and actions free of deliberate degradation or deceit; leave code, data, and documentation in a condition others can safely use.Good Order — Care and integrity protect people and the work they inherit.
Reverent.Be reverent toward God and faithful in your religious duties. Receive your talents and opportunities with gratitude, and use them responsibly in service to others. Respect the religious convictions and freedom of conscience of other people; speak about sacred things with care. Technical skill, wealth, and reputation are not the highest goods.Practical Wisdom and Good Order — Reverence places our abilities within a larger moral purpose; humility and gratitude guide their use toward human flourishing.

This law is a promise to practice, not a claim of perfection. Apply it first to yourself: examine your choices, repair your mistakes, and help others grow through your example. The twelve point names and their order are those of the Scout Law; the explanations and connections to the Perl virtues are this community’s formulation for the practice of our craft.

What we want to help flourish

Human flourishing means people having the opportunity to live and work well: to learn, build friendships, develop their abilities, earn an honest living, serve others, and take satisfaction in useful work. We want our conferences and projects to make those things more possible for the people who join us. Work should support a decent life for the worker and their family, with fair compensation, rest, and time for responsibilities beyond the project. Generosity should be freely given; it is not a claim on someone else’s unpaid labor.

Perl flourishes when people can do worthwhile things with it. That includes dependable software, useful research, maintained modules, clear documentation, new programmers learning the craft, and experienced programmers finding good reasons to keep contributing. Perl 5 is the shared tool around which PCC gathers; the people and the good their work can accomplish give that tool its purpose. More speed, automation, or profit is progress when it helps people live and work well. AI and other tools can assist us; responsibility for judgment and consequences stays with the people who use them.

These aims support each other. A patient teacher helps a new programmer gain confidence. A trustworthy maintainer helps a colleague depend on a module. A generous researcher shares a method others can use. Each strengthens both a person and the Perl community. We join together to support one another’s work, protect room for individual initiative, and share opportunities with people who have fewer resources. A healthy guild strengthens its members’ ability to act, learn, and earn a living. That is the positive impact we are striving for.

Dignity of Digital Work

Good work should support a decent life. PCC and Perl Guilds serve the same person: the programmer learning a craft, contributing useful work, supporting a family, and helping others. Our conferences, tools, and communities should strengthen that person’s ability to flourish.

Behind a module, a repaired server, a research tool, or a working application is someone’s time and effort. Often that person is an independent programmer, a small business owner, or a worker doing their best to provide for a family. Their work deserves respect even when it is quiet, unfashionable, or done far from a large company.

The dignity of work includes the dignity of the person doing it. A programmer is a person with responsibilities, relationships, and needs beyond a deadline. Fair compensation should make it possible to live decently, provide for dependents, and keep developing the craft. A bargain is not made fair simply because someone under pressure agrees to it.

For those who commission or depend on work, this means clear expectations, reasonable deadlines, prompt payment, and respect for the worker’s time. For those doing the work, it means honest estimates, care for the customer, keeping commitments, and speaking up early when a promise cannot be met. Fair dealing carries responsibilities on both sides.

Standing ready to respond is also dignified work. A specialist who keeps watch, preserves the knowledge needed to act, or reserves time to respond when trouble comes provides a real service. The value lies in the responsibility accepted, the skill kept ready, and the assurance that someone dependable can help. A quiet watch can be a successful watch.

A retainer can fairly compensate that readiness: access to specialized judgment, agreed availability, and capacity held in reserve. Its worth is not measured only by incidents handled, hours of visible activity, or lines of code written. We should not manufacture busywork to make useful vigilance look productive. Clear agreements about coverage, response times, scope, and time off respect both the person standing ready and those relying on them. That agreed readiness is itself a concrete service received by a client or employer, even when no intervention is needed. Requiring people to stay busy merely to appear occupied fails to respect their time, judgment, and dignity. Work should serve a worthwhile purpose; a person’s worth does not depend on constant visible activity.

A guild should help the small practitioner stand on their own feet. We can share practical knowledge, mentor apprentices, make introductions, credit contributors, and help people find paid work suited to their abilities. Someone without a large employer or institutional backing should still have a place to learn, demonstrate good work, and build a livelihood.

Open source and paid work can support one another. Sharing code does not make its author’s time unlimited or their labor worthless. Pay for support, maintenance, teaching, and development when you commission them; contribute back when you can. A freely offered gift is valuable, but it creates no entitlement to the giver’s evenings, health, or family time.

We want Perl to remain a practical means of earning an honest living as well as a source of discovery and enjoyment. Success includes the maintainer who can keep supporting a useful tool, the apprentice who gains a trade, and the parent whose skilled work helps put food on the table. A flourishing community makes room for those ordinary, important achievements.

Self-Determination

Self-determination is the exercise of agency guided and constrained by virtue. Practical Wisdom asks whether our purpose is good and our means are fitting; Spiritedness gives us courage to act; Good Order calls us to honor commitments and the rights and responsibilities of others. Choosing for ourselves does not make every choice good. Truth, justice, and the good of the people affected remain standards by which we must examine our actions.

We also accept responsibility for creating value through our own initiative. The Perl and technology worker is a capable person who can learn, judge, build, and act. Develop your skills, seek out real needs, propose useful work, and follow through without waiting to be directed at every step. Where you have the authority to act, exercise it responsibly; where you need agreement, bring a considered proposal.

Self-improvement is part of that responsibility. Keep learning, seek honest feedback, practice unfamiliar skills, and work on weaknesses you can change. Develop your character alongside your technical ability: better judgment, patience, reliability, and humility make your skill more useful to others. Set achievable goals, reflect on what you learn, and make steady progress. Growth is a lifelong practice, with room for rest, setbacks, and help from others.

Creating value means making a worthwhile difference for someone: solving a problem, preventing a failure, teaching a skill, preserving useful knowledge, or providing dependable readiness. Be honest about that contribution and accountable for commitments. Initiative also means recognizing when effort is being wasted and suggesting a better use of it.

Mutual support should strengthen our ability to act. A guild helps its members become more capable, resourceful, and independent; each member contributes effort toward that growth. Circumstances and opportunities differ, but we can take ownership of the choices within our reach. This responsibility goes together with fair treatment: creating value does not require surrendering family life, health, or the dignity that belongs to every person.

The technology we create, study, preserve, and promote

Our responsibility extends to the technology itself: what we build, what we research, what we keep working, and what we encourage others to adopt. Technical excellence includes asking who benefits, who carries the costs, and whether the result helps people do worthwhile work.

Create with care. Build tools that respect people’s time, privacy, and ability to make informed choices. A clever implementation does not excuse a harmful purpose.
Study honestly. Test claims, explain limitations, and make results understandable. Distinguish what you have demonstrated from what you hope will become possible.
Preserve useful work. Maintain code, documentation, research, and practical knowledge so others can inherit them. Respect the effort people have invested in existing systems, while being honest about when an old tool needs repair or replacement.
Promote responsibly. Recommend Perl and other tools because they meet real needs. Explain tradeoffs and costs, give credit, and help people develop their own competence rather than unnecessary dependence.

Passing on a working tool and the knowledge to understand it serves both the present user and the next generation of programmers. Preserving Perl matters because it preserves possibilities for people: learning, discovery, useful work, livelihoods, and service. Our enthusiasm for the craft should deepen that care.

Reference and reuse

Anyone may reference these virtues and the Perl Scout Law: individuals, projects, guilds, conferences, and other communities. You are welcome to link to this formulation and use it as a guide for personal improvement and shared work. When referring to this formulation, please credit The Perl Community and link to this source.

Suggested citation: The Perl Community. Perl Community Conference Principles & Perl Scout Law. science.perlcommunity.org/conference/conduct.html#perl-scout-law.

A short reference you can use: “We strive to practice the Perl Community Conference Principles & Perl Scout Law.”

If you adapt the wording, identify it as your adaptation and retain a link to this source so readers can distinguish your version from the PCC formulation.