I bought Renoise in the beginning of 2018 and switched to Reaper later (mainly because it was not clear to me if it is still in development). I checked Tracktion/Waveform, Bitwig and Ardour. None of these DAWs is effective like Renoise for my needs and Renoise makes a lot of fun too. I was trying to use Redux with Reaper, but there’s a bug (https://forum.renoise.com/t/linux-computer-keyboard-does-not-work-in-ardour/44280) and it’s not usable. Maybe Renoise will become open source in the future… who knows. If it is a question of money I would pay more for it. Anyway … a statement from the dev(s) after 2 years is not not too much to ask for imho.
I’m optimistic too:
We’re not intending to close down the Renoise project, but indeed the next big release is not around the corner. As mentioned before, we actually always have been working on/off Renoise, but this time people seem to be more disappointed about the slow release cycles than before. I can’t say why, but I think It’s not “just” the lack of information.