When a new major version of Perl 5 comes out, history suggests a new minor release will follow.

Some of this reasoning is pragmatic. For all of the requests of the Perl 5 Porters for people to test development snapshots (5.11.0 through 5.11.5) and the inevitable release candidates (in this case, 5.12.0 RC1 through... hopefully not RC2 and RC3), nothing gets more testing or bug reports than new major releases. Bugs get reported. Changes get requested. Changes occur.

The traditional view of new major releases is that they're somewhat unstable. "Wait for the patch release," people say. This was true of 5.6.0. (The ancient Camel third edition describes an unreleased version of Perl 5 somewhere between 5.6.0 and 5.6.1). This was true of 5.8.0. This was even more true of 5.10.0, where the CPAN itself suggested that 5.10.0 was a "testing" release for bleeding edge users.

Given the size of the Perl 5 test suite and the daily and weekly test reports produced from the bleeding edge of Perl 5 itself as well as the monthly releases, most of the obvious bugs appear and get corrected quickly. Even so, bugs happen. It's software. Changes occur and people notice only in odd or complex situations. Sometimes a new compiler warning appears, or underlying libraries change. Sometimes a few updates help get Perl 5 building on a platform which itself has changed.

A patch release is inevitable.

However, the Perl 5 Porters make no promises about when a point release will occur. Nor do they promise how many point releases will occur in a family.

The Perl 5.8.0 family had nine point releases between July 2002 and December 2008. If Perl 5.10 hadn't taken five and a half years, Perl 5.8.0 might have had fewer point releases.

22 months passed between the release of Perl 5.10.0 and Perl 5.10.1. There may never be a 5.10.2.

A point release needs two things: a steady stream of bug fixed in the core without breaking source compatibility and someone to identify appropriate those patches and to make the release. In other words, one or more people need to be able to cherry-pick patches from the development track of the next release of Perl 5 to the branch which will become the new point release. The weight of history and expectations is sufficient to assume that p5p will be able to find or herd enough volunteer effort to make a Perl 5.12.1 and a Perl 5.14.1 and so on, but if monthly Perl 5 releases continue and produce a new major release every 12-18 months, the likelihood of a Perl 5.12.2 and a Perl 5.14.2 decreases.

The single unpredictable factor is the presence of a major bug discovered in that release family; a major security bug or a data loss bug is one possibility. In that case, a single-patch minor release is likely. Beyond that, minor releases have diminishing returns.