Found your post at the end of the Verizon thread. Not sure how you figure it's "dead in the water", since 5.2 was posted right to the first page in that thread. Cant' go by the original post dates, since they update the first page when they update the ROM, but the rest of the posts in the thread don't change, so yes, it says the post was on Jan 8th, but it was just updated yesterday. When I downloaded it at work this afternoon, the ROM and both sets of gapps were there as well. I know that when the 5.1.9 was out, there was a push notification that said welcome to 5.2, probably was released when they thought 5.2 was ready, but it got held up and they went to 5.1.9.2 or whatever it was for a week, so the posts at the last page were reflective of that fact; people seeing the initial 5.2 notice before it was actually let out.
As far as ROMS go, I can't speak to other ones out there, but the activity of the Sourcery team is FAR from dead in the water.