Nobody want's to invest time into learning something called "Perl 5" when there's something already out there called "Perl 6". Yes, some research into it will reveal that they are now on two separate dev paths, but there is still some mental stigma associated with investing time in learning an "old version" of something. And learning the "newer version" quickly reveals that it is not widely used/supported yet. They are basically two separate languages and should be treated as such.

These days the arena Perl competes in is extremely competitive, and these seemingly small issues will continue to be disastrous for Perl.