I'm at FOSDEM. Some things got me thinking about Perl 6 and its place in the Perl community/ecosystem. People like Perl 6, even Perl 5 programmers say they look forward to diving into the language.
So, why are they waiting? Why aren't we "officially released" yet? I believe there are four big reasons.
Goal attained when: Whatever you can do with Perl 5 the language, you can do with Perl 6 the language, too.
This is the axis along which we're the furthest along. Some things are missing, but many things are in place.
Goal attained when: Perl 6 performance is non-awful for common tasks. It's generally OK if it's a smallish factor slower than Perl 5.
Some headway on this. More expected. More needed.
Goal attained when: Perl 6 threading doesn't suck, like it does in Perl 5. Bonus points for not just being solid, but being pleasant to use, too. The long-term survival may depend on whether we get this right.
Not much progress in this department, spec-wise or implementation-wise.
Goal attained when: Perl 6 interfaces with a Perl 5 interpreter to provide a reasonable (non-XS) subset of CPAN. It's OK if the Perl 5 interpreter is limited to a sane subset of Perl 5.
Various efforts have started. Too early to say which ones will survive.
If you ask me, we'll finally have a really-actually-releasable Perl 6.0.0 when we have a featureful, fast Perl 6 implementation with threads and CPAN. That's what we should be focusing on in the next two to four years.
kthxbai.