[StevePerkins]

Perl 5 was released in 1994. At this point, the "5" isn't really a version number anymore. It's just part of the name.

If you did a "major version bump" from here, you'd probably have to bring the "5" along for the ride. Like Java version 2, where you had J2EE version <X> for years.

In reality, there probably never will be another major version bump of Perl 5, in the marketing sense. The minor version number is really the major version number now.

[WorldMaker]

Which in turn suggests the Java (and others') solution of dropping the 5 and making the minor version the new major version. Look out for Perl 31.0 soon.

[spider-mario]

Java even got rid of two numbers:

J2EE 1.4 -> Java EE 5

Both “2” and “1.”.

[dottrap]

And as another example, Mac OS X (10), which debuted in 2000, has had every subsequent version continued to be named 10.X. Just this week, macOS 10.15 Catalina was released.

Funny that the name Mac OS X went to OS X and then (back) to macOS, but the 10.X name persists.

[erikpukinskis]

In communist Russia, minor version always have breaking change