Well, it all boils down to the admin at GoAzCats (likely a now secretive Jim Storey, who was a major player in the Cactus Classic and NCAA violations that went along with it. He was forbidden to be the site owner, but we all think he still is).
Anyway, time and time again the mystery admin there would all but call those on the free boards 'not customers' and 'freeloaders'. They'd try every ploy to get people to pay for 'premium' membership, even through outright deception and lies.
In May they decided that they were going to upgrade the forums. It's take a few days. The boards were down for an extended period, with nary a response from admin. Then a reiteration that the free boards were not really part of their business model and we should all just be happy with what we've got. Their upgrade failed and they reverted to an earlier backup. With no more explanations. So we left.
We decided to keep the community together instead of fragmenting so we started the new board. It's a co-op. Owned by the community. This week we are voting on domain names for the permanent address.