They don't want to maintain this software forever and are definitely urging people to use other software. They even admit that they will merge fix PRs with a disclaimer of "no promises".
I mean, the developer themself has said it's deprecated and has marked it as such formally on NPM with a link to a post that urges people to use alternatives, so I'm unsure of what you're arguing nor what it achieves. Seems to satisfy your own definition, they just don't have an exact date on when their maintenance charity will run out.