Unfortunately there was some error in the first version of the benchmark and the app’s score was 4.1.

The project was tightly tied to personal information about the dev, so he feared to be affected on his real life after negative comments started being posted.

The last post on the community told that either a fork would continue or he would republish everything under a different GitHub account.

A fork has indeed committed to continue his work and it has a couple of knowledgeable people working on it already, so it looks like nothing is lost. Plus the leaderboard has been amended 😉

I can confirm that it felt more or less like that 😓

From his explanation before removing everything:

I find myself in a very uncomfortable situation right now because, after revealing my personal information as the project owner, the current circumstances create a real damage to my public image as a professional and as a person. My coworkers, my managers, my employers (current and future) can see all of this and my personal reputation is compromised.

In the second to last paragraph he states there are two possible ways to continue: either some of the forks continues the job, or he will re-publish the app with a different account (and package name).

The community seems to have chosen the first one, and he will probably respect this decision. Good luck to the forks!

It has already happened with Artemis last year. It will continue happening but it’s how FOSS works.

Luckily there are other apps available, and the developer of Raccoon always said his project was experimental and did not intend to replace any of the more well established apps.

One of his mottos was “when im doubt, look at Jerboa for Lemmy”.

No need for that, because it has been forked and at least one fork was updated to the last commit.

BTW, only 2 people (besides the dev) in over one year submitted some line of code, it would be quite ironic that only after the original project has been shut down people start to be willing to contribute.

It’s like willing to feed someone who has just been starved to death.

This was indeed updated to the last commit from upstream.

The developer of Raccoon actually liked receiving feedback and constructive criticism, most of the issues reported had been solved it no time.

The main reason for the takedown was that, using his real name and surname, his reputation as a professional developer was being damaged by people crying that 4.1/10 for Markdown sucked, that it was the app with the lowest score ever, etc.

Seeing real damage and real losses in your personal life (for something you do as a volunteer) was probably perceived as a betrayal.

This fork is updated with the latest changes by the original developer:

https://github.com/N7-X/RaccoonForLemmy

plus its maintainer has started new developments and adjustments.

It was taken down by the developer after a sh*tstorm originated in this community which was damaging his reputation as a professional, since his real name was associated with the repository.