A year ago there were some posts about Nova being on shaky ground because Barry was the only one left working on it. This seems to just be continuing the negative narrative. Unfortunate. Seems like he was really close to open sourcing it, which would probably be a boon. It's a longstanding and still pretty popular launcher in the Android world isn't it? I've used it for years on multiple phones.

  > "If Kevin were to ever leave, it's contracted that the code will be open sourced and put in the hands of the community." 
  > However I was ultimately asked to stop working on Nova Launcher and the open sourcing effort.

I pray the deal won't be altered further.