[lizmat]

My take:

1. Parrot was initially intended to be the backend for Perl 6. 2. Perl 6 didn't materialize fast enough, so Parrot started focussing on hosting other scripting languages. 3. Parrot decided to become the backend for all scripting languages. 4. Parrot became less and less targeted towards Perl 6. 5. Parrot never really became a backend for any other scripting language. 6. Parrot became decicedly a poor fit for Perl 6. 7. Jonathan decided that maybe the JVM could also be a backend, and started porting 8. Building on that experience, Jonathan decided that they could write a dedicated backend for Perl 6, which became MoarVM 9. Parrot development dwindled to effectively 0. 10. During the Great List Refactor of 2015 (about 6 months before the first release) it became clear that porting the Parrot backend would be a lot of additional work, with no apparent upside 11. Parrot support was dropped before the first official release