[cwyers]

People can say that as much as they like, calling the thing that comes after Perl 5 "Perl 6" certainly SOUNDS like a version number, and the reason it sounds like it's supposed to be a new version of Perl is because once upon a time it was going to be.

[kbenson]

Maybe at the point of the 1.0 release, a naming change could take place. I think any time before then would be a mistake though, as it would maximize the baggage and minimize the usefulness of the new name. I'm torn on whether a new name, if it happened, would be better off explicitly referencing Perl (e.g. NG Perl), or leave it out entirely for something new.

[emmelaich]

My guess is that "perl6 1.something" will be followed by "perl 6.something". But that would require an enormous amount of compatibility with perl5.

[kbenson]

Well, with Inline::Perl5 and "use p5", that may not be entirely unfeasible. You can read more about Inline::Perl5 here[1], but the TL;DR is that it uses a Perl 5 interpreter along with Perl 6 to pass code back and forth, allowing pure perl modules and modules that interface with libraries to run fairly smoothly in Perl 6. There's also an Inline::Python that works the same way...

1: http://niner.name/talks/Leapfrogging%20the%20bootstrap/Leapf...