Excellent article that dwells into release management (or lack of it) in two big open source projects.

I think you mean "delves", not "dwells". Or maybe "drills"?

For the last two or three years perl 6 has soaked up all the concerted forward thinking energy, I suspect. Fortunately, perl 6 is on the home stretch now.

In fact, they say it'll be out by Xmas...

http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2008/01/what_the_perl_...

Fortunately the perl6 think tank does filter down into perl5 so hence we see things like Moose, smart matches, given/when, Perl6::* and more.

Yes, at this point - although it is looking hopeful - it is useful even as a pure R&D platform for Perl 5.