I think what also contributed to the forum not being as busy as it used to be is because the original members that were around back in FamiTracker's heyday are also getting older, living busier lives (jsr & myself included). I hardly get the chance to work on anymore music because of how busy my personal life is & I imagine the same thing with jsr, his life being so busy that he hardly has the chance to work on FamiTracker or any other hobby (or perhaps he moved onto another hobby).
And those who have their own active community using other spin-offs of FamiTracker; I don't blame them for switching honestly. People want to see new features in this program & due to jsr's life being busy as well, we haven't seen an updated FamiTracker since February 2015 (nearly 4 years). It just reminds me of the Nestopia emulator project; you have one of the best NES emulators known to the community, that has been last updated in June 2008, frozen in time at version 1.40. And then, someone else who wishes to see progress & bug fixes to a dead project picks up the mantle & we now have Nestopia Undead Edition version 1.49, last updated on June 2018 (10 years later).
I think this is what we're seeing here... Simply the evolution, death & rebirth cycle of yet another open-source project that has attracted many users, wishing to see it thrive. I remember back when I was on staff at the vNES emulation project, when Jamie Sanders was still working on his Java-based NES emulator applet & people were able to play games straight from a website; when Java was bought out by Oracle & applet programming went to the dumps, Jamie went onto bigger & better things, the project stagnated for 2 years & we had to close its doors in 2015. At least here, the communities that sprung up from FamiTracker are still thriving & getting people interested in composing music.
Perhaps if we went back to basics, like back in 2009-2013, making our own little music competitions, that could spark further interest. But I don't know.
