I had posted an ill-considered rant here, called "Yet another cold shoulder from Apple."

In a nutshell, I was wrong. Ruby and Python were selected as supported languages in Leopard simply because someone inside of Apple volunteered to act as a "sponsor" for them, reviewing their code to make sure it meets quality requirements, etc.

The good news is, Perl now has a sponsor too, and Apple has given me access to Leopard betas. Having full-fledged Perl support in Leopard is not a done deal by any means, but it could happen.