Given the number of developers it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that it's taking a while. Personally, I favor good and cheap over fast.
It's not like other languages are going to wipe out Perl in a hurry, anyway. The C language has been around for about 30(?) years and BASIC in all its forms at least 25 years.
I'm willing to wait for Perl6 and Parrot to meet the design requirements because once it is done it is likely to be around for thirty years or more.
Your manhour calculation comes out to 25 hours a week for each of those 10 developers,
which means they are each putting in a significant chunk of their non-work time into this.
So they deserve kudos instead of brickbats.

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