lirc and new upstream release, can we update?

[Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>]

Hi, I would like to have the new lirc in time for Stretch.

Alec (upstream) really wants us to update it, for various reasons
(including bug reports about outdated releases), new features,
RC bug fixed, porting to new libraries, less Debian-diverging package,
package in sync between Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu (not
three-differently-behaving-packages) and so on.

Since the pkg-lirc is almost dead (the last uploader retired
some days ago), and Stefan is too busy to review it
again, I'm asking for advices:

1) would it be nice to upload the package on experimental
and ask for testing?
2) would it be possible to create a lirc-ng package and
conflict with the current one, so people can choose the best one for
them?
3) NMU in unstable seems unfair and possibly a source of troubles for
such a complex package (with complex changes).

there is a new systemd integration, and some breaking changes
on the configuration file (with some migration helpers), but 

I really think following upstream will be a benefit for our end users.

Did I miss anything? anybody wants to test the package on mentors?
Any other idea?

thanks,
(Alec, please update it, or complete this mail with your opinion if I missed some
bits)

Gianfranco