Perhaps you are thinking of when Damien Katz (the original author of CouchDB) left the CouchDB project for CouchBase [1] (from which he has also since moved on [2])?
it's been alive and kicking all the time with various interesting implementations that can sync back to couch, for example pouchdb for browsers and/or mobile websites: https://pouchdb.com/
Thanks for the link. PouchDB seems to be a great example of an app that inherently works better with CouchDB/Cloudant than it would with MongoDB.
absolutely. I know some projects that implemented a mobile app with offline/sync capability using the couch/pouch combination. I haven't participated personally but from what the colleagues tell me it's working pretty well. (for all values of well that you can have when it comes to offline/sync. it's a tough problem.)
You can take a look at Couchbase Mobile for native client offline+sync capabilities, too. PouchDB integrates with Couchbase Sync Gateway, so the combo is versatile.
I got the same impression when I started looking at CouchDB in January this year. Seemed like it had been ages since the last release, and very little activity.
Looks like they've just been busy for the past while working on this merge and (eventual) release of 2.0, will need to take another look.