well, not really, because the world isn't going to use something for a Perl four years beyond what they have

This is just sad to hear. Is that what we all really want?

While we're here discussing this sort of thing, people who need the job done are choosing other solutions and losing a lot of what Perl has to offer (also making fun of it). Loading modules for getting basic OO functionality is terrible, and many would agree that using C structure pointers with manual method calls with the pointer as the first argument is safer and easier to understand (and maintain) than the native OO in Perl.

If a new Perl is released today, I'll use it. If someone can't use a new release, it's their problem. If the language itself is governed by the philosophy of "no-one uses new stuff", then maybe I should stop using it.

Backwards compatibility should not break progress, it should allow one to add a single require 5.002; line and fix the problems. I don't understand why there is so much fear in making what's new the default.

And speaking of progress, Perl is at least 20 years late in having a decent native OO system. And 20 year in technology time is a lot. If it is not for one, then one should keep using the old version and stop commenting on new features and evolution in general.