Wow… interesting and somewhat strange discussion. I must admit when I read path one I thought the same as Tim:
There are actually a number of possible plugins that do the job nicely and that is what I am doing for all my sites. Why would I want to use a CP based on WP6 when I can just use WP6?
I suggest that before you start thinking about what path to take, it might be more advantageous to ask yourselves where you want to end up. It is customary to leave choosing a path until after you have some destination clearly in mind. But then, that’s the problem with CP - it never really knew where it was going, beyond “WP-without-Gutenberg”. So, it means you get statements like this listed as a con for one of the options: “We won’t be able to catch up with WordPress”.
The conversations here mirror what I have always observed in computerland - there are basically two sorts of people. One group just wants stuff to work, and keep working and ideally not require any thinking about at all. The other group likes shiny new things and wants to see constant evolution - if something isn’t changing on a weekly basis then it is “stalled” or possibly even “dead” (of course you need this second group, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to sell new iPhones every year).
When I was contributing to CP I always thought that the ambitions greatly outweighed the available resources. I occasionally suggested a drastic pruning back of the project, but this was always met with widespread disapproval. I still think that if CP is going to survive at all (and I very much doubt it) then you will need to define a narrower subset of users and focus your limited efforts on catering to them. Personally, I would be aiming for the first group mentioned above, as they are the ones who are most disadvantaged by the changes, and the least interested in them.
Well, I am not expecting any different reactions to my suggestion, so won’t go into any more details. But I do think you should first try to work out what CP wants to be, before you start looking for any specific paths. I get the impression that there are a lot of different views here about that.