Is monotone dead, or is there a path forward?

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 06:05:09PM +1100, Brian May wrote:
> Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org> writes:
> 
> > I've just installed a new Debian 10 VM, and upgraded to testing.
> >
> > 'aptitude search monotone' returns nothing!
> >
> > Is it finally time to stop using monotone?
> 
> monotone has been removed from Debian. As in both unstable and testing.
> It only exists in old distributions.
> 
> https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/monotone
> 
> First it was removed from testing:
> 
> https://tracker.debian.org/news/940070/monotone-removed-from-testing/
> 
> It was removed from testing because botan1.10 is no longer available in
> testing.
> 
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=888089
> 
> Then it got removed from unstable:
> 
> https://tracker.debian.org/news/1089909/removed-11-9-from-unstable/
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=943919
> 
> "Please remove monotone. It's dead upstream, last upload was over three
> years ago and it's removed from testing since 1.5 years."

Is there any hope for monotone?  It appears no longer to be in Debian stable.
I'm using Devuan beowulf, which is roughly combarable to the currently 
stable Debian 10.0=buster.

Debian buster does not have monotone.
Nor, as a result, does Devuan buster.
But I still have monotone available on my devian buster laptop, 
presumably because I had it long ago before I upgraded to the current 
stable system.

And it still seems to work.

If I were to have to re-install the OS, I would lose monotone, and hence 
the contents of my repositories.

Is anything being done about this?
Is the current botan so incompatible that it's hopeless to adapt?

Or is monotone development and maintenance truly dead and I need to 
abandon ship and take what data I ca with me?

-- hendrik