Well, this is what my experience has been, Elgg is a great framework and I have been using elgg in 3 of my website. One of them heavily rely on elgg plugins by various developer out here and my other 2 website is using elgg only as a framework with my custom build plugins. I started using elgg with 1.8 and it's been 5 years since then. I was not able to help during my initial days because elgg was new for me but with time I have learned to develop and also contribute (sometime) and help others.

Yes, its true that the contribution and developer in elgg community has decrease with time but guess what new developer like me has also stepped in to help. I might still take time to fully understand the core of elgg and everyday is a learning for me, but this is not stopping me from taking the risk.

The main reason that contributor has decrease with time is because there are some people who only want ready made solution to be served to them on plates without even trying to solve the issue on their own. This is not how open source community works. Its not about give me this and give me that, sometime you also need to give back something back to the community. I know most of them are not coders and will face challenges to solving an issue but the funny part is they are not even trying to even do a small search on the community. Most of the time they would create a discussion thread which has already been discussed here several time from time to time. The solution might be there, all you need to do is search. This was only of the reason why Ismayil Khayredinov has retired from elgg. Second reason is definitely the funding part. Most of the developer has given day and night to build such lovely plugin without asking for a single penny and it would be great if they get even small contribution for their effort.

But in the end, I am moving forward with elgg and will continue to use elgg in hope that new people would come on-board and keep the open source community alive.

And one more thing, you forgot @RvR, he might not have contributed much on the core development recently but he's definitely very active on the community.

@RvR - Yes of course, I have not forgotten him. He/they have excellent Elgg and Elgg based social net offerings and lots of Elgg codes and snippets. Where Elgg is today is due to many many contributors and helpers. My main discussion or worry was on dwindling number of Core Devs and future of Elgg.

The main reason that contributor has decrease with time is because there are some people who only want ready made solution to be served to them on plates without even trying to solve the issue on their own. This is not how open source community works. Its not about give me this and give me that, sometime you also need to give back something back to the community. I know most of them are not coders and will face challenges to solving an issue but the funny part is they are not even trying to even do a small search on the community. Most of the time they would create a discussion thread which has already been discussed here several time from time to time. The solution might be there, all you need to do is search. This was only of the reason why Ismayil Khayredinov has retired from elgg.

Users will be users, if you know what I mean. And users who ask you repeatedly or pester you are still adopters of your product. I am not supporting the "bad" users and I am agreeing with you Rohit. At the same time, there can be programmatic solution to this like in github you mark "Duplicate" and refer to an existing link or in php based KnowledgeBase scripts, which tries to restrict you if you put up already asked questions by offering the user links to the already available solutions. Opensource communities have worked despite this sort of users BUT the dirty and giant monopoly facebook has killed a massive number of persons or youngsters who would be downloading php scripts or creating their own, like Matt (WP) or Dries (Drupal) - the last few years have seen NO birth of scripts like WP, Drupal or Elgg. Many scripts still get born but nothing of that sort which used to happen before.

While Devs have been frustrated for the reasons you say, at the same time users, who need a lot of hand holding, has also been frustrated due to valid or invalid reasons and they have abandoned adopting php scripts except for two or three "mini giants" like WP. Who wins? I do not know. If you look at history or beginning of some of the popular php scripts they were born out of "hobby" or personal needs or creative urges, were given huge traction by all sorts of good and bad users and at that time no one really expected money. That is how email, http www protocol, and even php was born. With time many factors entered : need of job, need of money, giants like G, FB etc 

ONE suggestion is that : Core Devs like Ismayil Khayredinov need to come back and never quit again. I think so but I do not know the happenings inside Elgg core team. And my idea is that if Core Devs feel that community is causing any problem or being an energy sink or any source of irritation, they can limit their participation to github and paid services. Answering in the community may be left to community  users like you, RvR and us and others.

Second reason is definitely the funding part. Most of the developer has given day and night to build such lovely plugin without asking for a single penny and it would be great if they get even small contribution for their effort.

Yes, I fully agree. There are paypal options but more links, per plugin links and commercial efforts like Aqua (Drupals commercial wing) or Automattic (Wordpress) are needed. Question is who will do that, how and when? Will that ever happen? And without that, will Elgg survive nicely ?

PS : Rohit, while you have clue to why Ismail may have left, have you any clue to these Devs I really miss, absolutely no news, nothing - Evan Winslow, Matt Beckett, Cash, https://elgg.org/profile/brett.profitt - and this page continues to give Fatal Error.

@kanha, you ARE that user. It makes me even angrier that you don't even realize that you are a leecher that has never given anything back to this community and keep plastering your endless give-it-to-me-for-free requests all over the forums.
I have quit after 10 years of trying to make this thing work. Obviously it doesn't, among other things because of people like you. In my estimates I have donated over 4000 hours to open source and people that instead of 5hank you give me bullshit for having abandoned this stupid self-destructive work. I have had a wonderful 6 months without Elgg, I have finally time to enjoy life, friends, books and doing things for my soul. Elgg turned from a soul project to being a draining experience, a black hole that never has enough of my time, and on top of that I felt frustrated with people that have no shame in abusing the time and work of others. I need to be making at least 3k EUR a months to sustain my life, pay my rent and have food on the table, pay taxes, contribute to my health care and pension, so keep you smart advise to yourself. Don't tell me what to do. Grow up, learn how to do things yourself and stop using people like they dispensable gloves. I did quit and this time for good.
I am open to working with other developers, who contribute regularly to open source - feel free to send me and email and I will provide you with access to my plugins. My shop is closed for everyone else.

I am sorry and my sincerest apologies if that has happened. However I am really honestly confused and I am not sure that I do have any such interactions with you in recent past. I hope you are not confusing me with any other user or incident. I will be obliged if you post here specific links where you have found my such behavior that substantiates what you say. Not for myself, but for the readers to have a neutral opinion. You also refer to "10 years" - which may be factually wrong as Elgg version 1 was available in August 2008, less than 11 years ago. I have appreciation and gratitude only for you and nothing else. If you are referring to my comment mentioning your name and a few words above, then I would seriously like to delete the portion if it has offended you or if the words failed to express what I meant, but I do not see the edit option now. Feel free to edit/delete any posts or all posts not found suitable. Once again, unconditional apologies and many thanks. Please ignore and always ignore words or persons that you find not suitable.

PS: I am glad that even after quitting Elgg you do read Elgg discussions. All the best to you.

To the site admin/admins : I find no Edit or Delete option for the opening topic, that is the first post of this post. I will like to delete this post or this entire post with my comments. Please do that on my behalf if possible. Best regards.

The contributions you showed were incorrect, I updated that in the post. You only showed the stats for the final stable release and not all the work that was done before that (beta and rc).

The stats also only show number of commits. A commit can be one line or rewriting the entire test suite of Elgg (thanks Ismayil).

I'll close this discussion as requested.