[mikemcquaid]

The main self-interested reason: we use analytics to judge what packages and options to remove. If no-one using analytics uses software: next time it requires non-trivial maintenance work it will likely be removed rather than fixed.

[Karunamon]

That's even worse - if I had a penny for every time a useful, but unpopular thing was shut down, I could fund my own startup!

[mikemcquaid]

And we could fund our open-source project to maintain these things. Sadly neither of us have these pennies ;)