I think FS was actually closer to dying 10-15 years ago than it is today. At the time this thread was created, I think we had lots of campaigns hosted here but barely anything had been actually released, while today there are tons of campaigns and content people have made. There are more media articles on FS and its community in the last few years than I've ever seen in past, like
this and
this, and there seems to be increased interest in old games in general with a lot of remasters coming out. FS also has no modern successor that improves upon it in every way, unlike many other games of that era, which has kept up interest in the game.
The interesting thing about old discussions such as the one we're posting in right now is the fact that - judging from what I see here - people used to have this sort of obsession for delivering a mod that was supposed to serve as a substitute to FS3.
We all had our own ideas of how the FS story was supposed to continue. The game was fairly easy to mod and came out right around the time when internet forums were first becoming popular and led to communities built around specific games. The story was captivating back then but had a cliffhanger ending, which sparked a lot of discussion on here (and the VBB before it) that inspired people to create whatever vision they had in mind.