No, it's a different quality if a variable can be accessed and altered in a different file from another author.

Furthermore putting a file scoped lexical behind the last sub would protect it from becoming closed over.

Package vars are accessible nonetheless, no matter where you define them.

perlglossary even makes a distinction between package vars and special vars.

In Perl, only certain special variables are truly global—most variables (and all subroutines) exist only in the current package.