As an outsider, just following briefly due to curiosity ... I would suggest commit messages including a rationale for such huge changes. It helps people reading the commit log, especially those who might not follow out-of-tree discussions closely.

From the diff I understand what the feature was and that it was experimental with a heavy maintenance load. But going from there to why easily ends up into speculation.

yeah, I didn't mean the commit message should be elaborate. Just give enough insight that you know where to look further for more info.

In this case, I think something like this could have been enough: "This code has been experimental for long while and is not a feature we see value in for the foreseeable future. Removing it to reduce maintenance efforts."