it wasn’t kept alive last time because it was a lot of work for maidsafe to maintain it and they had to solve difficult stuff at the same time. The next developer update (this evening) might get interesting for you
a valuable resource for getting started with developing for the safe network is the developer forum
ps: and if you are thinking about working for maidsafe i think they are still expanding the team (and plan on expanding even more early next year afaik)