Can you please explain to me why Epochtalk was even launched? I am a little newbie on this forum compared to many people. By the way it doesn't really make any sense, admin starts a new forum software development, probably puts some money in it and hires developers, then abandons it in the middle development process and doesn't even update the SMF. I am not critiquing theymos, I am just curious about that.
This is the part that nobody except theymos can answer with complete authority and information because the rest of us simply do not know, we can only speculate as to what has been going on for that many years and nothing of substance has been put forward to demonstrate any sort of development.
Just like you and many people, I think that this forum will be like this until theymos hesitates to pay server expanses.
As far as I can conclude the lack of development on a modern forum is not related to server expenses. The server fees are quite obviously being paid otherwise the forum would not be functioning with the scale that it is currently operating at. The lack of development on a modern forum that would be far more appealing to new members (or potential new members) has been something that has (to my knowledge) never been explained properly.