The first version of Zyn to be released was V1.0.0 in late in 2002. At that time, there were no Linux DAWs and (I think) only the Rosegarden sequencer predates it by a couple of years. The Ardour DAW didn't arrive till 2005, and at that time was purely audio - no MIDI. Zyn therefore had to include everything - MIDI, Audio (including live recording), Effects, file management. It was a fairly complete stand-alone project by 2004. Very little then happened apart from incremental version upgrades until about 2007/8 when a number of new people jumped in. This resulted in a fair amount of disruption, culminating in Cal forking this as Yoshimi 0.010 in 2009. Actual performance immediately improved dramatically, at the cost of losing direct audio recording, minimal Windows capability and the overall GUI appearance.
It has been relatively slow but steady development since then.
