This is sad news indeed, but from Microsoft not so surprising. Microsoft has never been "fence sitting" (sorry Steve), the only thing that has ever mattered to MS is MS. They push their market where they want it to go, and if we don't want to go there then tough luck. Once in a while an incident happens where they are temporarily swayed, but in this case I believe it is a corporate decision product-wide, not just SQL Server but across-the-board. As an independent (Windows) developer I have seen numerous instances where MS has abandoned previous MS-introduced technologies.

In my case my updates are dictated by my clients, very few apply CU's unless there is a really good reason, and then as others have noted we're not talking a 2-month cycle.

I could go into my client's issues with IE11 vs other browsers, but then IE11 would lose hands down, I used to be a die-hard MS fan ... not so recently

Phil