I mean, there’s really only so much you can do. If major changes are required, you can either make a significant new version with massive compatibility issues, splitting the community (ala Python 2 & 3). And even then, you’re still building off of the old code.

Or start from scratch and make something better.

Either way, you split the community, but at least with the new tool you can (hopefully) manage to make it a lot better than a refactor would have been. (In some areas, anyways.)

Plus, this allows the old project to continue on without massive breaking changes, something its users probably appreciate. And this old project can still create new major versions if needed, which is something you don’t get if you have a major refactor because everything meaningful gets shipped to the refactored version.

So I think spinning off a new project is a net good here. It doesn’t impact webpack very much unless people ditch it and stop maintaining it (unlikely). It lets them iterate on new ideas without maintaining compatibility. (Good, when the big issue with webpack is its complexity.)

So if the idea turns out to be bad, we haven’t really lost anything.