From my vantage point the trouble is that there were times when it didn't move at all. "always moving forward even if slowly" requires that it is always moving forward, so the question I have is how many missed opportunities were there to make say available with out the feature pragma? I can't answer that, but over 12 years the answer is probably "many". FWIW I don't use say because my impression is that it's easier to just add \n, but moreover it's almost exclusively because I would have had to turn it on. So was the issue paralysis of some kind? Again, idk. But say is an excellent example of something that should have been turned on a long time ago. Maybe that's the first thing that should happen in 5.32.1. See what happens. I mean it can't be worse than wasting everyone's time arguing and splintering the community again (not directed towards you whatsoever, just a rhetorical statement).