Perl 6 doesn't have much to do with Perl 5 except that the same guy created both. Think of Perl 6 as Perl 5's Clojure. Heavily inspired by the original, but a totally new and different language.
(Think of how non-radical PHP 4 -> PHP 5 and Python 2 -> Python 3 were, and how hard it was to get people to switch. Now imagine differences 100x those, and you can start to see Perl 6's relationship with Perl 5. P5 is going to be around for a long time; it's a great language, and people are going to be using and improving it for a while. P6 is a good language too.
They both happen to have the same name, though, which apparently confuses people.)
> Think of how non-radical PHP 4 -> PHP 5 and Python 2 -> Python 3 were, and how hard it was to get people to switch. Now imagine differences 100x those, and you can start to see Perl 6's relationship with Perl 5.
While the radical difference between Perl 6 and Perl 5 might discourage adoption, I wonder if the less radical changes of PHP 4 -> 5 and Python 2 -> 3 may have contributed to their slow adoption. After all, if there is no radical benefit you will receive from switching your code to a backwards-incompatible new version of your language, it can be hard to justify doing so.
(Think of how non-radical PHP 4 -> PHP 5 and Python 2 -> Python 3 were, and how hard it was to get people to switch. Now imagine differences 100x those, and you can start to see Perl 6's relationship with Perl 5. P5 is going to be around for a long time; it's a great language, and people are going to be using and improving it for a while. P6 is a good language too.
They both happen to have the same name, though, which apparently confuses people.)