Apple Blues follow-up and encouragement on "maintenance mode"

Just to clarify: when I wrote the Apple Blues item last time:

a. I was not personally lamenting the demise of every cited technology. Most of them I do not use anyway and I recognized that their departure might be for the best in the long run. Still, to some extent, this is akin to finding that your big toe has to be amputated to prevent the spread of some infection. The amputation may be for the best - but it isn't something to jump for joy about. It would have been better if the infection could have been avoided in the first place.
Of related note: an article in MacWEEK describes developers as less than enthusiastic about "Apple's decision to use OpenStep networking instead of Open Transport in Rhapsody."

b. And yes, I know that some of these technologies are going into "maintenance mode" rather than being dropped altogether. But I guess I had some skepticism about what maintenance mode really means and how much I could depend on Apple to stick by whatever they say that it means.

In this regard, I was encouraged by a letter from Chris De Salvo (who works on Game Sprockets at Apple) as posted on the Inside Mac Games web site (Thanks, Rainer Brockerhoff). Chris gives a mostly optimistic assessment, particularly when he states: "Having a project go into maintenance mode right now doesn't mean that it is dead, and it doesn't mean that Apple doesn't care about it any more. If Apple didn't care about the technology they would just lay everyone off. The fact that they have decided to keep even a small team around to maintain things is a good sign."