Now that I have had the experience of working on a book, I will never read a list of acknowledgments the same way again. A book takes a tremendous amount of work from lots of different people, and friends and family contribute far more than I ever realized.
I would like to thank my friends and family, who were not only very understanding when this book took a great deal of my time and energy away from them, but who also never stopped asking how it was progressing and patiently listened to me whenever I bemoaned my lack of free time. Thanks also to the very friendly folks at Printers Inc. in Mountain View, where much of this book was written between refills of coffee and tea.
Thanks to Brad Ashmore at Hewlett Packard for allowing me the flexibility to work part-time while juggling work, the book, and my sanity. Thanks to Baskar Srinivasan, Natasha Fattedad, and Anh Hoang for picking up the slack. Thanks to everyone I worked with at HP for understanding when I found I could no longer keep all the balls in the air.
I'd like to thank everyone at O'Reilly. A big thanks to Linda Mui, who has been shepherding this book to completion. She was always available to answer questions and provided just the right mix of encouragement and careful critique. Thanks to Rob Romano for the illustrations and to Christien Shangraw for coordinating.
Shishir Gundavaram deserves thanks for both new material and the original edition that so many of us read and used.
A big thanks goes to the reviewers and those who provided feedback. Gunther Birznieks not only contributed chapters, but also provided a very thorough review. Nat Torkington provided an exceptionally detailed review. Others who contributed feedback include Linda Mui, Andy Oram, Dan Beimborn, Sam Tregar, Paula Ferguson, and Jon Orwant.
Finally, credit goes to the open source developers who have worked long hours to create the applications and modules discussed in this text. Without their work, the Web would not be what it is today.
-- Scott Guelich July 2000
There are many people involved in the creation of a book. In particular, having the pleasure of working with both Scott Guelich and Shishir Gundavaram, two talented authors I had only met virtually before, was a really great experience. In addition, I would like to thank both Andy Oram and Linda Mui. I learned much from both of you through the course of this book.
Thanks to Lincoln Stein for originally suggesting to me that I contact Andy about helping out on the book. And also thanks to all the others at O'Reilly who were involved in bringing this book into reality. A book is truly a team effort with many people pitching in.
I would also like to thank the entire open source community for making a rewrite of the book necessary! When I look back at how many improvements have been made in Perl, web technologies, all the modules people have written, as well as the underlying global infrastructure improvements to the Web, I am astounded by what has been accomplished.
Finally, I would like to thank organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/) for helping keep the Web and Internet as free as possible in this increasing age of legislation. Ideals such as these have founded a cyberspace where ideas and information can flow freely from every corner of the Earth.
-- Gunther Birznieks July 2000
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