The only actual drawback I've come across in using these is that they're not included OOTB, requiring installs on any machines that wish to use any programs using any of these functions, if i'm correct in that.
The perceived discontinue seems unrealistic and is a terrible way to evaluate useful programs or libraries, or not-evaluate them, I should say....the world we live in today, technology comes, technology goes. The main determining factor in this is in fact the usefulness of the technology, seems backwards to deem them unworthy when their usefulness has kept them around for over a decade, apparently.