I was giving my opinion as to a target for the MATE Desktop development Team, not a target for my own "development".
As you may have seen from some of my other posts, I was, ("was" being underlined) looking at trying to build on Ubuntu Sever, but that has come to a grinding halt because I can't sort out the issue around Brisk Menu not being updated with new categories and launchers for newly installed Apps (i.e. Firefox).
The focus of this post was about what the Developers have as intended outlook going forward ... NOT what options I have available for me to entertain. I do that investigating on my own, all the time, but I am tired of working in a vacuum of information. Truly exhausted, mainly because I don't have the knowledge/experience of the software tools that were used to build Distros or the MATE Desktop. As can be seen with my postings, I have always tried to share the knowledge I harvested and refined into readily reusable form, and shared back with the community in the form of what I consider well-formed (meaningful variable names), well-structured (at least as best as I consider to make the code both readable and logical) and reusable (in the form of handy working scripts/programs/tools).
But that was not my focus with this topic of discussion.
I need this topic to be focused on a clarity of intent being communicated by the Development Team, especially its leadership, for the MATE Desktop.
I dearly hope that that will occur.
As for everything else you shared with us, I do appreciate the time and effort it took to communicate that to us. The information was not wasted. Thank you.