Yep - you supplied evidence that its effectively dead. A few rows per day for all modules in the module registry ? Compare that to any other PL in the top 50 and you will have pages per day. For active PL in the top 10, it would be several dozens of pages per day.
(For Javascript, it would be several hundred pages per day - buts..lets not talk about JS).
Perl is an old geezer hacking out its dying last breaths. Calling it "stable" is fine. Death is a very stable state.
I'm not going to necessarily disagree with you. Perl was my professional go-to language for about 20 years, and I moved on to Python for the past eight or so.
Back 15+ years ago, you'd see perhaps 2-3x more updates on CPAN recents per day than what's there today.
I'll always love Perl, but it's definitely on a long slow popular decline.
(For Javascript, it would be several hundred pages per day - buts..lets not talk about JS).
Perl is an old geezer hacking out its dying last breaths. Calling it "stable" is fine. Death is a very stable state.