The Tremulous Development Team believes in open source: mods and forks have always been possible
and are probably one of the reasons why Tremulous is still around. For various reasons,
some people need to do their thing and we can only wish them well in their undertakings.
Conspiracy is more fun.
I can only think of two reasons for their "desire" to move elsewhere:
1) They decided that they were making such an awesome iteration of Tremulous that it would be way cooler to finalize it and then spring it on us suddenly in all its awesomeness. This is unlikely, however, since they've allowed us to see so much of what they've already done. I can't see them being that indecisive.
2) Which leaves possibility 2, and I think this possibility is far more likey based on this fakelog that I recovered:
console: tremdev logged into your channel
Zdev: what took you so long?
Zdev: you said you wanted to talk
tremdev: yeah its important
tremdev: listen, this tremz thing you're doing
tremdev: its great you know, but there's a problem
Zdev: wat problem?
tremdev: well, tremz is looking *so* good that if you
tremdev: release it now, a lot of trem players might switch
tremdev: to it.
Zdev: what's wrong with that
Zdev: that was kinda the idea to keep the game alive
tremdev: well there's nothing *wrong* with that, but you gotta realize
tremdev: that this will split the community up even further (i.e. 1.1; 1.2; korx; tremz)
tremdev: and if that happens the game will just die
Zdev: no it won't! tremz's gonna help save tremuluz not kill it
tremdev: but surely if we split up the few players playing the official build
tremdev: the playerbase will get too fragmented, meaning the gaem WILL die
Zdev: even if I believed this there's nothing to be done abut it
Zdev: *about sorry
tremdev: yes there is and I think you'll be cool with it
Zdev: be still, my heart
tremdev: take your dev discussion away from trem.net and keep working on it till
tremdev: 1.2 comes out then release it
Zdev: LOL
tremdev: no really think about it. We'll speed up 1.2 so it comes out by Q1 nxt year and
tremdev: give ppl a chance to try it and maybe get some of the 1.1 players to go for it
tremdev: so the split won't be so bad and you get extra time to make tremz more awesome
Zdev: weeelllll
tremdev: that's not unreasonable is it?
Zdev: I'm not sold. ..
tremdev: I'll get stannum to throw in a batch of fresh muffns ?
Zdev: Well Ok
Zdev: that might work out.
tremdev: =D
Zdev: won't people think you guys shut us down though?
tremdev: technically we are but you just wait till after 1.2
tremdev: dw we'll use your account to post ambiguous explanations,
tremdev: make it look like your doing whatt your REALLY doing actually
tremdev: preparing a surprise for us.
Zdev: siiiiiighh k then go ahed.
console: tremdev left your channel