That’s the problematic part. You can’t just redefine a tag that is used so widely. Many paths would have to be retagged. Automated solutions for retagging are not welcome. And even with automated solutions, most paths would probably have to be retagged manually. A mixed state between the old “path” or the new one is extremely obstructive when maintaining the data.
Either you discard highway=path completely (I do not give it a chance) or you simply add a more precise specification like path=subtype
you missed the regulated multi-use case (e.g shared foot/cycleway).