The quite usable version of Rakudo Perl 6 is planned to be released on spring (northern hemisphere’s Spring, probably ). We”ll see how useful it is and what one can do with it

On the other hand, Perl 5 is still being developed, and is very useful and commonly used. This gives Perl 6 developers no urge to do it faster. This may cause two problems:

• it may never be finished, as Duke Nukem Forever
• it may be finished, but not widely used (as some people like Perl 5, and others already  switched to Python )

What do you think about Perl 6?

See also:

1. Perl, PHP, corporate – continued.
2. Perl 5.11.3
3. Perl as good as java, python and PHP way above

Waht is new in perl 5.11.3?

• Perl is shipped with Unicode version 5.2, itself released in October 2009.
• Perl can now handle every Unicode character property.
• The experimental ‘legacy’ pragma, introduced with Perl 5.11.2 has been removed. Its functionality has been replaced with the ‘feature’ pragma.
• Numerous CPAN “toolchain” modules have been updated to what we hope are the final release versions for Perl 5.12.0.
• Many crashing bugs or regressions from earlier releases of Perl were fixed for this release.
  

In my opinion is is very good, that perl 5 is still developed, as version 6 have still a long way to go, before it may be used (first, by enthusiasts, then by  coders, next by big companies that need reliability and stability)

See also:

1. Utf8 in web perl application (LAMP)
2. Inevitable parrot 2
3. Utf8 in web perl application (LAMP) – dbi, mysql