Future of ICU MessageFormat after releasing MF2

[Luniterse]

Your various documents state that MF2 is a better successor of ICU MF, but will be ICU MF deprecated?
We started utilizing ICU MF on our web-project like an year ago (moved from "gettext" nightmare) and are totally comfort with it. However the syntax of MF2 is too kludged for our use case and we don't need its new features, so we aren't going to port localization to it. Can we be sure that support of ICU MF will not be dropped from JS, popular browsers and backends?

[macchiati]

ICU has a commitment to long-term stability, so its support of MF1 isn't going to go anywhere.

I would expect support of MF2 by platforms/programs to develop over time, as the features of MF2 implementations and L10n tooling become more and more compelling. I'd expect MF1 support by platforms/programs to continue until there is sufficient migration to MF2.

[eemeli]

However the syntax of MF2 is too kludged for our use case and we don't need its new features, so we aren't going to port localization to it.

Could you say a little more about how/why you find it to be too kludged?

Can we be sure that support of ICU MF will not be dropped from JS, popular browsers and backends?

There are a number of JS libraries that provide ICU MF support, and they're rather unlikely to ever wholly disappear; similarly, backend support will continue to be provided by ICU. Browsers have never provided ICU MF support, so there's (unfortunately) no possibility of a drop in support on that front.