"Last January the group did release a bugfix release version 2.2 Release Candidate 2a, but this was the only official development of the year. The rest of the year the group remained silent. Leadership was absent even on the osCommerce forums which in previous years had been run with an iron fist

"Discussion of other open source programs was permitted and the posts remained, leading to speculation that the development team has simply abandoned ship. The once-prolific forum moderator and poster Ponce de Leon, who once posted to his forum daily, failed to even log onto his own forum for five months until he returned briefly earlier this month....

"Over the years, the unyielding management of the founder, Harald Ponce de Leon, forced team after team of developers to resign."

Contrast that with the poor old AmigaOS: once upon a time it was revolutionary, and it still has a large devoted following. But development stalled because it lost funding, and ownership of the code came under dispute, and is still unresolved. Hyperion Entertainment and Amiga, Inc. both claim to be working on Amiga 4.0, but who knows if it will ever be released. Or if it will be relevant, or comparable to other modern operating systems after all this time. A lesson in how the freedom to fork, and to release your modifications, is powerful protection from lock-in and obsolescence.

References