Well, people are still free to maintain and improve those older tools and bring them up to par with newer standards, if they want to.
Others would argue it's time to start phasing out code and so-called "standards" we've had since the early 90s in spirit of refactoring various elements in the ecosystem. As with most such efforts - lots of code will be thrown away, some of it will be re-used and re-purposed. I'd argue that in the long run - it's probably a necessary intervention.
So the notional idea of 'refactoring' being better -- yes! But with the constraint being that the people doing the refactoring have to be at least as wise, tasteful, mature, sensible, and thoughtful as the people who came before.
When choosing platforms, how communities weigh this balance is a very important consideration. You want to associate with people and groups who value essentially the "reasonable breeze" mode that keeps life flowing through extant systems. "Natural disasters" may sometimes be justified to help clear out the way-too-old (e.g. systemd or SMF), but they should be rare; systems can only tolerate major disruptions like that once or twice a decade.
Linux has an "anything goes" approach, which is usually more symptomatic of the age/maturity of the crowd it draws in than a reasoned decision about where to fall on this balance. That's not necessarily bad, but it makes more of an experimental atmosphere than something reliable, trusted, and stable.