It is.
The title above is an exact quote from correspondence I received in the summer of 2007, and echoes what many, many others have written or said to me.
They're wrong.
Well, they're right, of course: Expect gives them the appearance of dormancy. I haven't researched what all goes into this, but I'm almost certainly there are basic errors of fact afoot.
It's certainly true that Expect, and Tcl more generally, is managed conservatively. It is maintained, though, and with considerable care and expertise. In particular, I know that it remains ahead of what the corresponding Expect extensions for Perl and Python achieve.
I think it'd be great for people to mention here the evidence they have of Expect's inactivity; perhaps we can collaborate to understand better its true state.