in reply to The Perl 5 Conspiracy
Personally, I've tried to stay out of the whole perl 6 debate. Not because I'm not excited about it. But because I simply don't have the time to provide meaningful contributions (I tried getting haskel working on my gentoo box, it failed to compile, I haven't had time to figure out why, so I tossed it, preventing me from even looking at writing test cases, failing or not). Contributions can be either time or money - and I don't really have either to give.
So when I saw all those complaints about how long perl 6 is taking, it was, well, annoying. Annoying in that perl 6 is perfectly on topic here, and easily ignored, yet wasn't (although I ignored it in that thread by not responding to fuel it). And, as the saying once went, "put up or shut up." Either put up the time and/or money to help, or leave well enough alone. Even assuming that anonymonk is right that perl 6 is a pipe dream, never to be finished, how exactly is that harming him/her? Because they aren't spending their time on perl 5? Sorry, but their free time is theirs to spend, not some anonymous whiner. I won't be so presumptuous as to tell Larry what to do with his time that I'm not even paying for. Now, if I had the money to buy Larry's time (and he was willing to take it), then I could ask for more time and effort spent on perl 5. But I don't have the money, don't have interest in asking even if I did, and am not even sure Larry would take such a job.
So, of your suggestions, the bounties sound reasonable (putting TPF's money where its mouth is to improve the state of perl), and the vote sounds reasonable (as long as it's non-binding on anyone who isn't being paid to develop perl5, and probably not even on any who are being paid for it). But the others seem unreasonable and uncouth: it's their spare time they are so generously donating to the rest of our productivity, it'd be even more arrogant than Hubris calls for to demand of them absolutely anything other than what they want to give, and how they want to give it. Of course, once certain features/bugs/whatever are voted on, I'm sure someone will go looking for itches to scratch and be enticed by the extra brownie points garnered by tackling a highly-popular itch. But that's no guarantee.
As for xdg's "high-value and low-difficulty" criteria - I feel like this is just as presumptuous. Having a list of things we'd like to accomplish as a community is one thing. Ordering it by perceived value is another (voting is good for that). But putting volunteers on things that they have no interest in is less than productive, and probably demoralising. (Money, of course, can be an interest...)