Thanks, that does explain a lot of your reasoning more clearly. I'm not sure I can change my assessment of the situation though, as the relative timings of these events, which I think matter greatly, aren't known to me, and the Rakudo interpretation of these circumstances isn't known to me either. I believe the Rakudo response can be explained by their belief that the special relationship between projects was unsalvageable, and the was forward was no longer in Parrot. In that case I try to fall back on my default, which is to assume people will act in their best interests while also trying to minimize damage and discomfort to others unless given cause.

Whether the actions of the Rakudo developers indeed did cause a major Parrot exodus is something I'll easily cede at this point. Whether that was intended, unintended or the opposite of what was intended seems to be what we are really talking about here (because I believe intention can matter, not in assignment of blame, but as possible mitigation of scale).

The irony of this is that Parrot seems to now well and truly be a P6 focused VM, as the only work done on it (besides rurban and util) is by Rakudo devs to fix bugs or make small changes to new Rakudo stuff works. Why rurban still bothers is beyond me, AIUI he's still got p2 to work on.

In any case, you've been more than a good sport in humoring me in all this; you put up with more from me than I would have imagined. Thanks!