or you're incompetent
That is indeed how the VC funding game is played. If you don't raise another round, you are dead anyway, so you spend down your seed round to try and justify that following round...
I’d bet on extreme irresponsibility.
(Honestly I don’t think so here, but I predict that will happen eventually)
The discussion here isn't about funding, it's that there's a presumptively useful community tool which got abandoned because its owners took their toys and went home when the money ran out (instead of making a sincere effort at transitioning to community governance). That's on the IP owners being selfish jerks and/or grifting losers. It's not the VC's fault.
There are good and bad ways to extract yourself from maintainership obligations. This is the bad way.
Also read the link. This is apache 2 licensed. Even in whatever imaginary world where there is such a social contract, there is thankfully a legal contract that includes disclaimer of warranty.
Also the whole project is open source. If you want, you could take it over.
Yes, that's exactly what it means!
"It's still open source because you can fork it if you really want" is a specious and unhelpful attitude, and it tells me that you, like the owners of this thing, are not to be trusted to manage such a thing.
The report says, the CEO and founder, is a Ketamine addicted weirdo, who does Nazi salutes in public, is know to have at least 24 kids, and lives in an isolated farm in Texas, with at least 5 to 7 female partners, and got sued for calling a guy who saved kids a Pedophile.
You in?