[_ck_]

Only people that have rushed to the new version are in limbo.

1.0 has been out only a whole week now.

The alpha/RC phases didn’t help as more was changed afterwards.

One only has to study what happened to WordPress during it’s growing pains to see what will happen to bbPress.

GPL means you can republish the plugin, ie. post a link to a new download with your fixes. Taking over for an author within the extend section itself is another matter however and is best done with permission from the original author. Then someone like Sam can add you to the SVN. Rarely is it impossible to reach an author – they may leave bbpress but unlikely the entire internet.