In Damian's talk on Perl 6 (at YAPC::Eu::2002), he mentioned that when a certain language does not appear to have a future (as in, no serious updates, fixes, etc), people consider it dying. When Perl 6 was announced 2 years ago, they apparently noticed a Perl boom.

If you have trouble convincing pointy haired bosses, send em to a Damain talk :)

Greetz
Beatnik
...Perl is like sex: if you're doing it wrong, there's no fun to it.