[enome]

My guess is that because Express and Connect aren't really big frameworks changing something fundamental as the middleware API would break all backwards compatibility. So you'll end up with a different framework anyway. This way people that like generator middleware can pick koa and if you prefer the old style middleware you can still use Express.js.

I also see pull requests getting merged into Express.js on almost a daily base. So I am not really worried about it dying anything soon. Most of the road map items for express are about extracting it's features into separate modules as well. Which means they are aiming at making the Express core even smaller and less opinionated.