This thread escalated quickly…
Anyway, what Natron needs is developers*, donations etc are currently useless. Until that happens the situation will not change much(**).
We have a large community with talented and dedicated artists that help each other and new users, creates new plugins, documentation and tutorials, that’s far from a “dead” project (IMHO).
(*) This has been a problem since the start, and I doubt this will change much. It’s a niche project.
(**) I will try to work more on Natron in the future, spare time has been an issue on my part since this summer, mostly due to a new job. And, Natron works for my needs, so motivation to work on stuff I don’t need/want has low priority.
That’s because Natron had developers and funding, but at a certain point the funding stopped since the project failed to “go commercial”. The project is now 100% FLOSS, so it’s up to the community to continue the development (for good and worse).