On the other hand, libpijul received 0 external contributions over the three years during which it was public. The biggest contribution I got was from someone

On the other hand, libpijul received 0 external contributions over the three years during which it was public. The biggest contribution I got was from someone who rediscovered it independently after asking me about it, and didn't even care to respect the license. Moreover, the formats of an experimental tool, especially when it is based on new math, need to change frequently. Every single time we've done it in the past, we heard weird comments here, on Reddit and Twitter that our theory would never work because the implementation was not there yet. There were also unfortunate professional choices I don't want to comment on, which forbade me to work on Pijul other than sometimes on the weekends. I ended up resigning in July 2020, and have worked on the new Pijul more or less 100% since then.