The Web still use jQuery and you are worried 1K poly will be around for some year if not forever, which is exactly the whole point of my post:

• it’s only for Safari and other browsers has no reason to drop something that already works, already shipped, and it’s part of the current specification
• even if it’ll stay around forever, it’s an irrelevant piece of code, size speaking, that doesn’t compromise performance or loading time
• it’s zero extra effort for the 80% of the surfing world and it provides the best in class hydration mechanism ever, as opposite of requiring 100K+ libraries to do the same in a slower, bloated, clunkier, way

… but I guess I should ask you to red again the post, as I feel like repeating myself here … the problem is not maintenance, neither if the 1K poly is needed forever, the problem is developers mentality around polyfills … yes, these could stay around for years and nobody should ever care.