Seriously...

Why Perl in .exe and limited to XP and Vista...

When you could go C++ or Java and provide source by which end users can port to:

Hardware Platform

x86
x86-64
risc
powerpc
sparc

Software Platforms

Linux
Unix
Irix
AIX
Win32
osx
hpux
freebsd
netbsd

ALL OF WHICH ARE USED IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY.

You seem to be taking a pretty wide and round fence and literally choking it in to within a few feet of yourself leaving lots of platform options out. Flexibility environment wise has gone out the window. In the limited time I spent in science - controls were absolutely important - but so was flexibility.

PERL is a scripting oriented language - whereas C++, Java and Fortran as Skywise has pointed out - are pure programming languages requiring compilers of which their source codes are portable with minimal library/header/copiler modifications.

I could give you a source.cc file right now which you could toss onto a Linux box with g++, a Windows box with Turbo C++ and literally compile right away assuming the libaries listed exist. (It would calculate spoke lengths...)

Also, I'm sensing a little attitudinal problem as well...

I get the sense that you feel the need to get LittleA and LittleB and LittleC behind you in order to "bully" BigD to go along with you.

What happened to persuasion and a little honey to attract flies?

When I'm in the midst of diagnosing and solving a NetBIOS related network problem - I don't need to round up a bunch of people posse like in order to say to a denier, "See, I've got so and so with me, are you going to listen now?"

Instead of naming certain countries FIRST with another insinuated as a later target - how about simply just releasing it anywhere and to anyone blind?

Let the program speak for itself...not an adhoc SPAC.

=8-)