You're confusing Perl 5 and Perl 6. The two are different languages with vastly different communities.
When I was still active on their mailing list there was a lot of excitement around Perl 6. By the time I left most others had already been long gone. They'd gotten smacked too many times.
None of that is Larry Wall's fault. He's been herding cats since he started these projects. I think Larry is great.