I'm also interested in an answer to this question. Perl 6, as a feature set, looks awesome and I'd really consider replacing my use of Python with it, espcially because of the gradual typing and fast startup time (assuming Perl 6 follows Perl 5 in this regard; my initial experiments haven't been encouraging though).

In general, I think there's huge latent demand for a relatively fast, "next-gen" scripting language, as even Python is showing its age in terms of the programming styles it doesn't support, and has no plans to.

Will it really be released by the end of this year? Obviously the history of this project induces a healthy bit of skepticism. My two cents would be that the dev team should just release it next week and fix the inevitable warts gradually.

On a related note, should I, as someone who does not know Perl, bother learning Perl 6 yet? Or is it likely to change a lot before release?