Having been part of projects that grew large over time and are composed of too many components, I understand why this is done. It reaches a point where you can't go to each open issue and see whether it's still relevant in the context of all the new and different technical changes that would have gone in during that period.

That mail does seem to point to a place where users can report this afresh if it's still relevant. So, not a bad approach, to get these bug reports to hopefully in a more relevant and manageable state.