I have been curious how the community would hold up after Pieter's death. This project is a unique case because of how much work went into building community and welcoming contributions. That said, the world is a different place than in zeromq's heyday. Other commenters refer to Martin leaving the project, C++ regret, and a poor fit with node.js. Maybe in the face of all those changes zeromq's mature community is primarily why it lives as a project.