[chromatic]

there's no horizon on which a complete implementation (or stable target for a spec/test suite, for that matter) is promising to arrive

That is the problem.

The future of Perl is very, very difficult to predict. 14 years ago, the next major version was announced. It was explained and designed and promoted in public by gathering the community's list of 361 technical flaws.

P6 is now older than Perl was when P6 was announced and no one can tell when or if P6 will replace Perl. That includes developers as well as users and technical decision makers. If you start a new project in Perl today, how long will it be supported? Will you be able to hire or train enough developers? Will you be able to retain them? Will P6 ever replace Perl?

Python has its difficulties with the gradual adoption of Python 3, but at least there's a consistent and coherent story about community expectations. Perl doesn't have that, and that, to me, as a technical decision maker, is a huge risk.