I think this is a good sign, as far as stabilization goes. It means they're frontloading all the experimentation, rather than saying "maybe next version."
- Pacabel
Why? A potential user isn't owed anything; Mozilla hasn't done a marketing push to capture you, gotten you to sign up for a developer program, or offered Rust up as the solution to any given problem you have. They haven't promised you anything. They're just tinkering with Rust like you'd tinker with a custom car in your garage. Also, unlike Perl 6, there's nothing that's laying fallow in an increasingly-desperate way while they work on Rust.
On the other hand, a programming language is forever. I'd rather have a programming language a decade late, that I can use for 40 years, than a programming language right now that gets outmoded after four.
Oh, don't worry. There's plenty of activity in Perl and the CPAN that's not waiting on Rakudo.
While programming languages may "last forever", their viability for real software development is very impacted by their adoption. Languages with limited or minimal adoption will not be usable for anything beyond trivial software systems. Just look at the Modulas, Lisp, and even Haskell.
- Pacabel
This is precisely what the current push towards 1.0 is. You can look at the priority tags on the issue tracker.
> What I don't think we can settle for is a language that remains in an alpha or beta state after 5 years, or even 10 years.
Rust is currently making all efforts not to be that.