From what I remember; it was mostly a one man project and he was writing it for himself, this upset some people and they felt his personal project should be democratic. It created a great deal of drama and he found himself having to deal with the drama every time he tried to engage with the community. Eventually he just walked away from it all. The fork died shortly after since the people who forked it were still dependent on him for development, all they really offered was a fork that was free of his supposed tyranny.
That's a shame. For some reason a lot of projects are forked by people with not enough skills to do any continued development. And some people seem to thrive on the ethical high horse side of free software.
