I interpret this discussion towards the idea of not supporting . in @INC in the future for somewhat plausible security reasons.
Note that this would not prevent manually adding dot to @INC.
Update: Also see this bug ticket, which I think was the original report.
In reply to Re^6: Requring minimum perl version in a cpanfile ( use lib '.'; )
by Corion
in thread Requring minimum perl version in a cpanfile
by Anonymous Monk
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