This is controversial because people run businesses on 20-year old software, and they don't want to run their business into the ground every time some outside d

This is controversial because people run businesses on 20-year old software, and they don't want to run their business into the ground every time some outside developer wants to clean up their code base. People's livelihood is at stake. They prefer software that remains solvent. Natural selection has produced a world where people value backwards compatibility. And you should always be able to upgrade the software you have without fear of breakage, because maintaining a fork and/or deciding which versions to use is often untenable as it relies on specialized knowledge which may not exist in your organization. If you as a software dev want to maintain a clean code base with no deprecated features, you are free to build one. That's not what this is, and you shouldn't expect anyone else to use it if it were.