"a trickle of new folk". No. There's a trickle of people that come, stay for a week and go.

The following folk are examples of the trickle that you don't see that I do. These are from yesterday's #perl6 log. In order of appearance:

• timotimo first spoke on #perl6 Jan 2012. He began making commits this year. Some of these are visible via a search of #perl6 for dalek tracking of Timo Paulssen commits to selected repos.

• labster first spoke on #perl6 December 2012. He's been landing commits since the same month. Some of these are visible via a search of #perl6 for dalek tracking of Brent Labs commits to selected repos.

• FROGGS first spoke on #perl6 August 2012. He began making commits in September. Some of these are visible via a search of #perl6 dalek for tracking of Tobias Leich commits to selected repos.

• lizmat first spoke on #perl6 August 2012. She's been landing commits since the same month. Some of these are visible via a search of #perl6 for dalek tracking of Elizabeth Mattijsen commits to selected repos.

• not_gerd first spoke on #perl6 November 2011. He's been landing commits since March 2012. Some of these are visible via a search of #perl6 for dalek tracking of Gerhard R commits to selected repos.

Searching through other days will reveal more such folk. Like I said, a trickle. But not zero.

I just don't see people flocking to tear the results out of their busy hands. I don't see people waiting eagerly for Perl6 to get into a (for them) useful state.

Coders are, quite rightly, not interested in using P6 until it's ready for them, and it isn't ready for most coders, even adventurous, early adopter types. Similarly, the P6 project is, quite rightly, not making any attempt to attract users because it isn't ready for most coders.

Aiui there is still $100K waiting in a bank account (part of the Hague Grant) to be spent when the time is right for raising money to promote P6. My guess is that that process will start once Larry declares a 6.0.0 spec.

It's very hard to predict when that will be, but I've been consistent about my prediction (late 2014) for the last 4 years and it still looks about right to me.

the choice of JVM will probably never cease to surprise me

Are you aware the design choice was made in the late 90s, before P6 was conceived? Do you know what the rationale for implementing it now is?