I don't get it, isn't that the point of open source and free software, why doesn't the author, or a group of like minded people simply fork the old software and

I don't get it, isn't that the point of open source and free software, why doesn't the author, or a group of like minded people simply fork the old software and release a SimpleEtcD? Of course, you could argue that the people who made it more complicated in the first place could/should have forked instead of taking over, but that ship obviously sailed a long time ago.