In software, to deprecate something is to mark it as no longer recommended while leaving it in place. That is a reasonable engineering status. The trouble is that “deprecated” has become the word for “we have stopped caring about this and will remove it whenever we like,” and the user, reading the label, is expected to infer the rest.

The word’s root is “to pray against.” A deprecated function is one the maintainers pray you will stop using, because they would rather not be the ones to take it away from you. The euphemism lets them signal an ending without scheduling it.

Like “sunset,” which is in this dictionary, “deprecated” removes the actor. Nobody decided. The thing simply acquired a status. Mamet’s test holds: a developer who says “we deprecated it” is describing a decision as a condition, and a team that talks this way will be surprised, every time, when the users are upset.