It has already happened with Artemis last year. It will continue happening but it’s how FOSS works.
Luckily there are other apps available, and the developer of Raccoon always said his project was experimental and did not intend to replace any of the more well established apps.
One of his mottos was “when im doubt, look at Jerboa for Lemmy”.
No need for that, because it has been forked and at least one fork was updated to the last commit.
BTW, only 2 people (besides the dev) in over one year submitted some line of code, it would be quite ironic that only after the original project has been shut down people start to be willing to contribute.
It’s like willing to feed someone who has just been starved to death.
The developer of Raccoon actually liked receiving feedback and constructive criticism, most of the issues reported had been solved it no time.
The main reason for the takedown was that, using his real name and surname, his reputation as a professional developer was being damaged by people crying that 4.1/10 for Markdown sucked, that it was the app with the lowest score ever, etc.
Seeing real damage and real losses in your personal life (for something you do as a volunteer) was probably perceived as a betrayal.
This fork is updated with the latest changes by the original developer:
https://github.com/N7-X/RaccoonForLemmy
plus its maintainer has started new developments and adjustments.
Purtroppo sono cose che capitano ai progetti open source mantenuti da una sola persona costantemente sommersa di richieste e di critiche. Prima o poi la pazienza finisce e talvolta anche la salute. E gli utenti di certe piattaforme non fanno sconti (la fine che ha fatto l’app Android per kbin, Artemis, è stato un precedente in questo senso).
Per favore, cancelliamo questo post. Il progetto è, purtroppo, ufficialmente morto.
In the second to last paragraph he states there are two possible ways to continue: either some of the forks continues the job, or he will re-publish the app with a different account (and package name).
The community seems to have chosen the first one, and he will probably respect this decision. Good luck to the forks!