In the three and a half years that the Perl6 project is on its way, perl5 has produced 5.6.1, 5.6.2, 5.8.0, 5.8.1, 5.8.2, and even 5.9.0. In the mean time, perl6 hasn't even decided how their operators will look like.

Granted, modifying the perl5 sources is hard, but that's caused a large part by having to be backwards compatible. If, just like perl6, that condition could be lifted, it would be easier to develop 5.10 or 5.12.

Perl5 is evolving. Perl6 isn't there.

Abigail