Why do we keep using META.json for stuff that has nothing to do with installation

Copying a rhetorical question from #distzilla here, as it warrants a 
wider audience. The background is yet another discussion of a kludgy 
workaround where an installation with an older JSON parser is tripped by 
unicode in META.json. Unicode that doesn't really serve any purpose for 
an installing client.

<ribasushi> why do we continue to keep trying to stuff unicode into meta 
in the first place?
<ribasushi> the authorship information has nothing to do with 
installation time
<ribasushi> we use it for display purposes only (e.g. metacpan)
<ribasushi> anyone considered META.meta or similar?
<ribasushi> I am not even talking about 5.8 at this point - on windows 
having unicode in meta will be forever a pain
<ribasushi> ( due to Xmake proliferation and various backwards compat 
kludges which leak META into the generated makefile )
<mst> I dunno, my stuff only ever handled it in the first place because 
ilmari complained at me
<ribasushi> https://metacpan.org/source/ETHER/Moose-2.1605/META.json 
<--- 2600 lines, maybe 20 of them have to do with actual installation 
and are expected to be read by *any* installer. The rest... is best 
effort anyway, why not separate it and stay happy
<dipsy> [ META.json - metacpan.org ]
<mst> hmm. I bet the original goal was for the META file to be fed into 
packaging systems
<ribasushi> right, which was in another era more or less ( no cpanm, no 
metacpan, no perl-pkg groups etc )
<ribasushi> perhaps rethinking "Meta for end-user install purposes" and 
"Meta for meta" would solve most of the recent repeated breakages by "oh 
downstream doesn't like this new thingymagic"

Cheers