[1] I believe they're either close friends of Megiddo or people who were quite active back in the day- people who ran popular servers (WildWill) who we'd play with, or frequent visitors on our own server (Banyon) back when we had one. I know Spbogie worked on quite a bit of ULX with Megiddo in the early days. Good days! Jeez, you're making me all nostalgic
[2] I think Jay is just busy with life, like Megiddo and I. It's pretty hard to balance free time on projects like this when your free time is so limited.
[3] Who knows! It still baffles me that Garry's Mod is
the eighth most played game on Steam right now- I thought it would have died off by now. The community has always been filled with nitwits and immature people- maybe it's just even more noticeable to me now that I'm older.
A lot more younger (<15yr) players are playing as well.. However, there's been an increase in large server communities, and it seems to be turning into a business- making money off of scripts, donations, "hiring" custom developers, etc. Garry's Mod used to be free, too, and any custom mods up until recently has always been done for the community and fun, not for profit. I believe that's a big factor in the "value and care" feeling that's been lost.
However, going back to point 2- it's hard to spend all of your free time slaving on something that people mainly take for granted. It's hard for us to see simple ULX modules earning more from being sold than we've made in donations through the entire project (hint: it's not a huge amount). We're in an interesting position though- everyone hates on ULX, but they either
won't pay for an admin mod as there are already free ones, or someone will create the "hip new admin mod!" (Evolve, Exsto, etc.), but then support eventually dies as the original creator moves on or gets sick of dealing with support.
Don't worry though- we have plans for ULX moving forward, so long as interest remains and as time allows.
Anyways, that's probably enough rambling for me!
*Note: These are my views and may not necessarily reflect the views of Team Ulysses, blah blah other disclaimer stuff.