I think what really happened is they moved on and dealing with the bugs after they had moved on would have been very costly. They may have had to move on knowing they were losing some key devs. This version may be significant since the old development crew is almost non-existent. Still small, but now w/ new devs. 
That Carrara closing problem I am pretty sure has been reported. Quite a few people seem to have had that problem. Often resetting the prefs file can help w/ Carrara weirdness. I have experienced it being slow to close, but not apparently as badly as some others.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.