Installing a distro, I expect all things in it well integrated and optimized for this combo of packages and tools. Where that is not the case, I call it a bug. More if this system carries the attribute "Enterprise". A system is not there for its own sake, and there's no such thing as a "system-only perl". The system is there for applications to run, not the other way round.

It is a shame RedHat lets this bug sitting around. But then, they clearly favor python over perl since anaconda. It is irrelevant whether they just don't care or are trying to discredit perl - the result is the same.

building your own perl is not an option on enterprise systems which are tied to the RHN update process; and it is there this bug is most likely to cause the most waste. Everybody subscribed to RHEL should complain at RedHat.