RFC ended up with decision to keep subsilver2 as separate style in 3.1 and completely remove it in 3.2. Major factors in that decision were:
- Many users like subsilver2 layout.
- Support for outdated browsers.
- IE6 is irrelevant and IE7 is sort of irrelevant with about 1-2% of visitors using it. By the time 3.1 is released, those browsers will be obsolete.
- Subsilver3 was created. It looks just like subsilver2, but is based on prosilver.
- Style system was changed and many templates were changed, making it impossible to upgrade 3.0 style to 3.1
- Mobile devices are used way more often to access web.
- Extensions were added. Mod authors already don't support subsilver2 in 3.0, I doubt anyone would bother with supporting subsilver3 in 3.1 extensions. Using subsilver2 will cause only problems.
- AJAX was added. It was not implemented in subsilver2, removing large portion of 3.1 functionality from subsilver2 users.
- Those who want to use subsilver2 because they like layout can use subsilver3.
- Those who want to use subsilver2 because their current style is based on it will not be able to upgrade their style. They'll have to rebuild their style anyway, so why not base it on subsilver3 instead?
- Outdated browsers that don't support prosilver are thing of past.
- RFC was rejected in favor of graceful deprecation. Graceful deprecation is already happening without 3.1. Many 3.0 mods already don't support subsilver2, 3.1 extensions won't support it ether. That means anyone using subsilver 2 will not be able to use most extensions. Keeping it will only cause problems. No need to drag it out longer, let style die instead of becoming bane of mod authors.
- Less work for developers, extension authors, support and styles teams.
- Since imagesets were removed, new function to keep fake imagesets was added to 3.1. That function isn't really needed for anything other than subsilver 2. Removing subsilver 2 will make it possible to remove that fake imagesets function, as well as many useless template variables added on many pages, such as {IMG_UNAPPROVED}.
- Subsilver2 is not fully functional. It is missing AJAX. It will be missing mobile layout if its implemented in prosilver (which is a possibility if mobile style rfc is implemented as responsive layout).
- Most if not all extensions that use templates will not work with subsilver2.