Hello,
I have been with the FA community ever since the original SupCom BETA and I watched it flourish and dwindle on GPGNet only to be reborn on FAF. Over the past couple of years FAF grew into something really special (albeit I am not active anymore) and I have never imagined it would die ... especially this way.
From what I can gather about what happened it seems that ZEP has grown tired of it, because of people constantly harrassing him with stuff.
It is of course your project ZEP and you are can do whatever you want with it. However if you somehow expected that everyone would love everything about it and that there would be no assholes harrassing you ... well, that is just childish and dare I say stupid. No matter what you do you will never be loved be everyone and this goes for anything in life. The only way you might get some sort of "peace" would be to not do anything in life.
It just makes me sad that you somehow feel the need to shut FAF down ... I assume deep down its all really about revenge for you, which is understandable, but incredibly silly if you really think about it.
If you dont want to cotribute to FAF any longer: I am sure that would be fine for 99% of the community as we are very grateful for all you have done.
I honestly do not know how much time it takes to just maintain the sever ... I assume not much and I certainly dont see why shutting the whole thing down must be the answer here. However I may be wrong and in that case you should stop being a baby and hand it over to someone who is willing to do that after you are gone.
All in all the community probably will survive even you dont bring FAF back online in one way or another. However it is increadibly stupid to destroy something which is almost perfect on a whim.
InCom