Very interesting summary of facts and quotations with conclusions. I would say there are even more camps than the two mentioned. Personally I think C++98 and Qt5 just worked and were good enough for all purposes, and C++ since has become an ever moving target with a lot of incompatibilities between compilers. Chasing for the ever latest version of the language and compilers is very expensive and enervating. I prefer how they solved this e.g. in the Ada community; they take their time for the release a new standard version, and until then, most compiler vendors have already updated their products and there was relevant experience with the new features long before the new standard was passed. In computer science, it seems to be a law of nature to keep "improving" good things until they become unusable and people walk away. In C++ I did so; I have a few C++11 code bases (some back ported from newer versions), but most are C++98/03; I even made a fork of Qt5 (LeanQt) with my own build system (BUSY) which is less work to maintain than continuously chasing new compiler/tool incompatibilities among platforms.

(2024)

It's a committee, many people are involved, all with different opinions, but any decision requires consensus.

Why would anyone expect big broad changes? And historically, whenever they did happen anyway through forced compromise, they resulted in failure because they were not consistently implemented.

The only way that works is small compatible and iterative changes.