The world has become a larger place. The universe has been expanding, and Perl's been expanding along with the universe.
Information doesn't want to be free. Information wants to be valuable.
Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse.
Over the long term, symbiosis is more useful than parasitism. More fun, too. Ask any mitochondria.
Programmers can be lazy.
I'm not too concerned about the future of Perl after me, because I see how these people are interacting with each other and even when I'm not there, they are helping each other and solving each other's problems in a way that I could not do, even if I were there.