Perl 6? The Long Wait

I've been waiting for Perl 6 for quite a few years now...

I initially started hacking Perl in 1998 in my days as a software tester.  Perl is a programming language that tends to be popular with testers... usually because of its powerful text processing features (built-in regex's, dynamic/weak typing, simple/powerful data structures, etc).  It is perfect for munging large data sets and slinging text into whatever test configurations you need.  I have written plenty of useful software in Perl.

But.. the Perl community has sort of stagnated and other languages are taking over what was once its niche  (By stagnated I mean in terms of getting a finished version out, certainly not in terms of work being done.. which there is lots of).  We have been waiting on Perl 6 for many years now and a working implementation is yet to be generally released.  Every year or so, we get a new term or acronym to chew on (Parrot, PONIE, PUGS), but day to day I write less and less Perl as other languages seem to be moving faster.  I know there are lots of very bright and talented people working on Perl 6... and I appreciate that.  But I get the feeling that it is concentrated in a few individuals.  I wonder why Perl 6 development hasn't scaled like some other languages have?  Other dynamic language communitues (i.e. Python/Ruby) seem to be constantly embraced and pushed forward... and with that comes a healthy community with diverse and active contributors.