Here's the scenario:

A popular open source project is used/loved by many but has become stale due to the fact that the last drop came out nearly a year ago. Many bugs/feature requests/fixes have been logged in the interim and everyone is getting by via downloading the trunk and building custom/private builds with the changes incorporated. The copyright is simple -- there is none and the code is in the public domain. The project owner spins the project as community open source and has set up a sourceforge site, but to date (5 years running now) has yet to accept one contributor. In other words the "community" is a community of one.

The project owner takes great pride in the project and has obviously contributed a lot of time/effort but for whatever reason has has seemingly abandoned the project and is unresponsive when offers of help are made.

So, the question, should the community fork the codebase, set up a new community site, and take matters in their own hands?