But the Python 2 development community a) has announced a specific date for end of life (January 1 of next year), b) had communicated the intention to sunset Python 2 in favor of Python 3 for years before the specific date was announced, c) is no longer applying anything but critical bugfixes to Python 2, and d) has collectively moved to developing Python 3. None of these are true of Perl 5/6.

Alternatively, if we're going to look for analogies in other languages instead of listening to statements from the Perl 5 community themselves, let's make an analogy to C and C++. Despite C++ having been a mature, usable language for decades, people are still using and developing C compilers and libraries.

You're right Perl 5.18 is no longer being maintained.

But Perl 5.30 is still maintained, and almost all Perl 5.18 code should run on it unaltered.

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As far as I know, there is no-one who is involved with maintaining both Perl5 and Perl6. There are separate groups for both.

In fact I think there are more people being paid to work on Perl5 than there are being paid to work on Perl6.

Perl 5 and Perl 6 are completely separate languages, they aren't "versions" of the same language.