Certain applications need the improved speed that the new subroutine model will allow. Many, many things will be easier to do--a switch/case type statement will be native, there will be macros, really beautiful things with subroutines in terms of specifying parameters and such. The Perl community wants these things and needs to know that they are coming.

(2) Perl 6 is not needed yesterday.

Perl 5 is still the best language, ever, for a human to work in. Development is still continuing with Perl 5. People who are developing in Perl 5 do not have to worry if they write a large application in it, because Perl 6 will be able to run Perl 5 code unmodified (trivially modified? I don't remember for sure on this).

We could go for years and years with Perl 5 and still be thrilled that it was the language we were using.

In another way of looking at it, you are right--it is very likely that some other scripting language is going to come along and replace Perl within a couple of years.

It's just that the language is Perl 6.

The fact that they are called Perl 5 and Perl 6 is a bit misleading, because Perl 6 is essentially a completely new language. I understand what you're saying--at first glance, it looks like maybe Perl development has gotten stalled between versions. But what is really happening is that the same people that made this amazing language that actually works with you to do your work rather than against you to enforce its theoretical model are writing a new amazing language that will replace it. That is going to take time, but it's worth the wait, and while you're waiting you've got the first amazing language the whole time.