[pcwalton]

People come and go from every project. I haven't noticed any particular drop in momentum for the Rust compiler. (Also, the Rust compiler dev community is hardly "secretive and opaque"--just look at the amount of drama that regularly spills out into the open. I can't think of any compiler that's more openly developed than Rust, in fact.)

A brand-new Rust compiler may well never happen, but if it doesn't happen it's because the business value for a complete rewrite isn't there, not because of some mass departure of compiler developers.