I don't think my statement is overblown...

True, not the gist of it. I was specifically thinking of the "downfall of Perl" part, which I think overstates the case a little.

Perl will continue to survive and prosper and enable all sorts of great coding even if its installation/module model stays exactly the same. If the model doesn't evolve, though, Perl-based software will remain largely of, by, and for programmers, and remain cut off from a lot of users who could benefit from it (IMHO). Whether that's a direction Perl "should" take, though, given the impact it would have on the community and ethos, I'm not informed enough to say.