All Things Plants couldn't go live until Dave either out-waited or legally defeated (details of that lawsuit were not public, nor should they have been) some noncompete clause from the initial sale of DG. When that parent company got into financial trouble and sold DG to another company is when Dave was forced out. Cubits was a way of continuing the DG forums, because the gardening cubits weren't owned by Dave, he was just providing the infrastructure.
I'm personally sad that I can't use Cubits to open a store now, because that function initially worked really well. ETSY is expensive and full of rules. I'm a happy customer there but not sure about being a seller.
