Is there really a dearth of maintainers for the originals? They already work fine, no? To me it sounds a bit like: "Addition has become stagnant, so we need to re-implement it in higher category theory. Sure, 99% of even research mathematicians don't benefit from that re-implementation. But no risk no reward! If vocal traditionalists refuse to contribute to reinventing the wheel, maybe they're working on something that hasn't been refined/stagnated decades ago, but I won't take their perspective (that addition already works fine) seriously, unless they start re-implementing addition as well."