The issue was also opened in a very positive and respectful way, which sets the tone for the whole discussion.
From my own experience, if I've been away from a project for a while sometimes there's this snowball of guilt that just keeps building up, and if there's people saying "hey what the hell?" it just adds to it. Understanding that and making sure there's no implied accusation can go a long way to getting someone to break their silence.
This is probably the friendliest fork I've seen happen. There's even a comment where someone points out he's been active on other projects, and is thus alive and well and still coding, but just obviously ignoring htop specifically. The general response to that news seems to be relief that he's okay and that nothing (obviously) bad has happened.
It's nice to see users of an abandoned project happy that it's because the developer (apparently) abandoned it, as long as he's okay.
Many thanks for pointing this one out. And as someone said about the OP setting the tone with his opener. Regardless the whole thread was a wonderful read from start to finish.
From my own experience, if I've been away from a project for a while sometimes there's this snowball of guilt that just keeps building up, and if there's people saying "hey what the hell?" it just adds to it. Understanding that and making sure there's no implied accusation can go a long way to getting someone to break their silence.