Over the years, we've seen many custom ROMs come and go on our forums, which is understandable. Most of the custom ROM developers are volunteers who very kindly choose to contribute to the Android community and make some devices a whole lot better to use. Sometimes, after years of development, life catches up to them and it's harder to keep contributing. Also, sometimes it doesn't make sense to keep developing as Google adds so many previously custom features to AOSP or Pixel devices. We saw one of the most notable leaves of absence from Paranoid Android, the popular Android development team who stopped work a couple of times, but which has recently made a resurgence.
Now, Dirty Unicorns is the latest popular project to be discontinued. I've been using this custom ROM since back in 2013 when I was rocking the Samsung Galaxy Note N7000. They had one of the most interesting navigation gestures (years before Apple and Google). The ROM also came with Dirty Tweaks, which let you customize basically any aspect of the system. Unfortunately, the founder of the project, Alex Cruz, announced the project's shutdown last week. Apparently, the team will cease development operations after Android Pie development. That will most likely happen with the official release of Android Q in Q3 of 2019.
Generously, the team is leaving behind its GitHub organization as a reference for other developers. You can port the features into your custom ROM or just take a look at how it's written. The Discord server and Twitter account of the team will also eventually shut down. We want to use the opportunity and thank the Dirty Unicorns team for continuous years of development and hard work. Their work truly inspired many developers on the forums and taught others a lot.