I'd disagree with "almost no one". Lots of people still read books and texts that were composed in the past - it's even compulsory at school - and lots of people have a hobbyist interest in etymology. If I look a word up in a smaller dictionary than the OED I usually find it doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know, or it just raises questions that send me to the OED anyway. Of course you wouldn't use the OED to look up a technical term. Wikipedia would be better for that.

What I really love about the OED is how it keeps getting better even in its coverage of old words. There are lots of words which ten or twenty years ago had the etymology given us "unknown" but which now have a detailed explanation, thanks to recent research. (If you want an example, I think the word "koala" is one.)

> If you want the current meaning, the OED is a poor choice.

That's simply not true. The OED has the current meanings, in more depth than anyone else.

> That question is relevant to almost no one.

Also not true. Most books and other texts were written before 2018.

> That's simply not true. The OED has the current meanings, in more depth than anyone else.

The printed OED does not, though there have been separate print supplements to the print edition that get it closer.

The online edition, OTOH, does.

It depends on how fast the meaning of that particular word has changed.

Tangentially, is there a better use case for moving to a database than 20+ volumes of books? To put it another way, if someone had a database and said, 'hey, let's print this thing out - it will be around 20 large books - and sell it!' ...