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Because there's this "never touch a running system" fear, deeply rooted in our industry.

The whole "move fast and break things" is a big lie, because you know that in that way, the system works, newer changes will break countless systems/scripts/etc

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Also because doing the same thing over and over again "[because X for X in (consistency, security, esthetics, whatchamacallit)]" grows old fast - and by the time it's been fixed and running again, X is no longer there, or it's been totallty twisted out of the intended shape.

You are both correct.

There is a risk of change.

There is a risk of stasis.

I think the latter is a much lesser risk, assuming the "works" in "if it works" is indeed correct. After all, sure, /usr has a funny history, but in practice it doesn't really bother anyone.

That could be the case. One example of the cost of stasis: the / vs /usr requirement in the FHS might stop or complicate future technical possibilities that use the filesystem (packaging systems, distros, copy on write snapshots etc) from being possible. Sure it's a low cost in this instance, but there's always a cost.

It's one more thing people have to learn. For that reason it imposes an ongoing cost.

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