Some thoughts on the expected demise of Magento 1.
The official end date of the Magento 1 project was due to be November 2018. As expected this date came and went. November 2018 would have marked three years of the release of Magento 2.
In September 2018 it was announced that Magento Inc. would continue to support Magento 1 through to June 2020.
The updates will ensure Magento 1 is provided with software security patches, so no new features but any updates will ensure Magento 1 remains secure and compliant.
OpenMage is one project attempting to create an LTS (long term support) release which will be backward compatible with Magento 1. The idea being people who would rather keep their Magento 1 store active would silently switch from Magento to OpenMage.
One of the stated main tasks of OpenMage is to make OpenMage (and by extension Magento 1) compatible with the latest version of PHP, PHP7.