There's an added mystique around TextPattern because it was initially written by Dean Allen of Textism/Textile/TextDrive fame, and he has subsequently disappeared from the Internet, taking with him his blog, Textile lost to Markdown, and of course TextDrive famously got co-opted by greedy tech douchebags, eventually turning into Joyent and getting acquired by Samsung. So it's quite remarkable that of all Dean Allen's works, TextPattern is the one that keeps on chugging along with its open-source essence intact.