1) Whether you agree with the practice doesn't affect the terminology used. People remove APIs. Before doing that, they deprecate them for a period to advise people to move off of them.
2) If you were to always maintain backward compatibility, how is "depreciated" in any way an accurate term? If the old API continues to work indefinitely, its value stays the same.
2) If you were to always maintain backward compatibility, how is "depreciated" in any way an accurate term? If the old API continues to work indefinitely, its value stays the same.