The first development version towards perl 5.10 has been released. Hugo just wrote on p5p:

  What of October, that ambiguous month
  -- Doris Lessing 'Martha Quest'         

Perl 5.9.0 is now available, and a somewhat more official announcement
will follow when mirrors have had a chance to catch up. In ~CPAN/src or
~CPAN/authors/id/H/HV/HVDS:               

       4688 Jul 18 23:31 perl-5.9.0.readme    
    9478487 Oct 27 02:59 perl-5.9.0.tar.bz2     
   11905830 Oct 27 03:17 perl-5.9.0.tar.gz

Abigail