The forums and the Q&A support areas *are* easy to find; both of the resources in question are available from the first sub-level of the menu:

Forums: Community -> Community Forums
Q& A: Community  -> Ask Our Community (in its own highlighted area)

...along with many other resources such as the Wiki, etc.:

Wiki: Community -> Wiki

Regarding access to a download link for the platform, the third menu column, "Platform", has the Start/Install option and takes you to the following page:

http://www.dnnsoftware.com/Community/Download

In a *huge* font the page reads, "Build amazing websites. download the Free, Open Source DNN platform!" followed by download links.

 I can only speak from the platform team perspective, but IMHO we're in better health than we've ever been. The platform team was greatly expanded and includes folks such as Charles, Shaun and Bruce which should reflect it's importance.  I think it's instructive to check the changelog for the past year

https://dnntracker.atlassian.net/browse/DNN#selectedTab=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.project%3Achangelog-panel

7.0.1

Stabilization Release

No release date

90 Issues 

7.0.2

Stabilization Release

No release date

 1 Issue 

7.0.3

Stabilization Release

No release date

 55 Issues 

7.0.4

Stabilization Release

No release date

 37 Issues 

7.0.5

Stabilization Release

No release date

 40 Issues 

7.0.6

Stabilization Release

No release date

75 Issues 

7.1.0

Major Release

Release date: 09/Jul/13

 94 Issues 

7.1.1

Stabilization Release

Release date: 13/Aug/13

 180 Issues 

7.1.2

Stabilization Release

Release date: 25/Sep/13

247 Issues

7.2.0

Major Release

Release date: 04/Dec/13

248 Issues 

7.2.1

Major Release

Stabilization Release

257 Issues

As you can see we've massively increased our output (not as a surprise as the team size increased) which has resulted in the issue backlog being smaller than ever before.

Furthermore, with the move to jira and github we've revitalised community contributions. Where before a release might have a handful, in the past 4 months on github we've had 51 contributions from 17 different contributors (https://github.com/dnnsoftware/Dnn.Pl...) with another dozen waiting to be merged (there is also ~200 contributions via jira with150+ of those are from Sebastian)

Hopefully that demonstrates some of the progress DNN has made over the past year. IMHO Any suggestion that DNN itself is stagnating/dying is very wide of the mark.

BTW there are plenty of good ideas on this thread but I dont see those ideas in jira/voice. They're unlikely to get worked on if we don't know about them, so please log them (for trivial ones) or add them to http://www.dnnsoftware.com/voice and get some support for the idea (we have limited resources so focus on ideas that have proven to have a demand)

First, it is important to differentiate between the number of people using DNN and the "community".  I'm not sure if the total DNN users is down - I would guess that it probably is somewhat.  But just because someone uses DNN doesn't mean they take part in the community.  But from what I can tell the "community" is dying. Re:

1. A number of long time DNN community members have noticed this independently of each other.
2. The DNN forums - the main place for the community to assemble, associate, and collaborate is a shadow of it's former self.  In the past the main sub-forums would have pages of new posts each day for each sub-forum. Now, a weeks worth of new posts for ALL forums will fit on one page.
3. I went to the way-back-machine and browsed through Snowcovered circa 2008.  There was more functionality (modules that do things) available then than there is now.

It may be that the number of users is still there and it won't really be that hard to rebuild.  One of the main reasons for the community falling is the sacrifice of the community for "communications convenience". i.e. Spreading the community out over Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.  These venues are probably great ways to promote the community but terrible ways to maintain it.  New people coming in to just one of those venue's see a very limited "community" and may go elsewhere. Use those venue's to push new people to the community site and create  long term members.

As far as the need for an independent store goes - there are numerous reasons for that.  The DNN market will probably always be much smaller than Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, etc.  Giving up a fairly large percentage of the sale on a MUCH smaller amount of sales hurts more than the same percentage on 5 times as many sales. The site needs tools to direct developer energies towards modules that will sell. vs. Developers coming out with the 6th or 7th forms module or the 50th media gallery module.  Bogdan at DNN Sharp has an excellent start on such a tool - maybe he would be willing to help.  Another need would be for the future.  DNN Corp. has long said that they have provided the hooks to build the same functionality as Evoq - but that's easily said when such 3rd party functionality doesn't exist.  If it did and started eating into their sales what do you think would happen?  And this isn't "the evil corp" type talking it is just business. You can't blame them for wanting to promote and protect their financial interests.

Last but not least I would say the majority of the "blame" for the community dying lies with the community rather than the Corp.  The Corp. has an Excellent bait and switch marketing tool and as along as the status quo doesn't change they'd be crazy to change it on their own.