> The real tragedy is that financial interests can totally pwn an ecosystem.

Yeah I was struck while reading this that they had multiple sponsors, enough money for multiple conferences, paid contributors both full and part time, and they obviously have enough money to pay lawyers. That's not a small amount of change. Most programming languages don't have nearly that level of support, so that's quite something for a language in decline, as you put it. Seems more like vultures picking a carcass than anything.