Ddos 
Nova Launcher is perhaps the most renowned and widely used third-party Android launcher. In 2022, it was acquired by the analytics firm Branch, which at the time also absorbed the launcher’s 12-member development team.
During the acquisition, Branch pledged that if Nova Launcher’s founder, Kevin Barry, were ever to leave the company, the launcher would be open-sourced and its code released to the community.
In 2024, Branch announced a round of layoffs, during which the entire Nova Launcher team was dismissed, leaving only Kevin Barry, the founder and principal developer. For the past several months, Barry had been preparing to clean up and release the codebase as open source. However, in the end, Branch ordered him to halt both development and open-sourcing efforts.
Now that Kevin Barry has departed from Branch, he will no longer be involved in the launcher’s development. It appears that Branch will need to reorganize its own team to continue work, though the promise of open-sourcing the project is almost certainly lost.
At present, Branch’s plans remain unclear—whether to continue development or suspend updates altogether. Either way, it spells unwelcome news for Nova Launcher users. Without the guidance of its original creator, even if updates persist, the launcher may gradually become bloated and lose the spirit of innovation that once defined it.
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