I was very much interested in LightTable. If I had given money to the kickstarter fund I would be very ticked to find out that those funds were being redirected to a different project (and I would not give funds to those individuals again).
I am also trying to be helpful by pointing this out (not just taking a cheap shot).
Also, my gut reaction to this is "LightTable is effectively dead". Again, not trying to be mean -- just basing this on a long history of following the industry.
All that being said, it does seem that the LightTable folks are trying to be transparent about all of this, and that much is refreshing.
If they are successful in producing something very useful, my hat is off to them. But I have to admit that it sounds kind of "pie in the sky" to me in this announcement. Please feel free to prove me wrong :-D
Just to be clear: this is not Kickstarter funds being redirected. We worked on LT for 2.5 years, we were given 280K (after KS's cut), around 20k went to shirts/fullfillment. That's 260k for 3 guys in SF over 2.5 years... that money ran out long ago.
Thanks for clearing this up. It was not at all clear from the announcement. I would suggest that you update the original post so that others don't get the false impression that I did.
It would be a shame for that to be the case. The amount given was indeed much more than reasonably used up if it supported 3 people for 2.5 years (especially in SF).
> Just to be clear: this is not Kickstarter funds being redirected.
While that's good to know, I think that the implicit upside gain hoped for from Kickstarter that underlies a lot of decisions to fund through it (especially for software) is that acheiving funding means not just that the thing gets delivered, but that an effort is made to build a sustainable business model is built around it and support the user community. The perception that, having delivered the kickstarted product and spent a couple years on it the team would abandon it and move on to a very different kind of focus (even if in the same broadly drawn domain) understandably reduces the perception that that kind of upside potential is around for a future effort.
Now, one can argue that that kind of upside expectation is somewhat irrational in the first place, of course.
This is very good to know, and something that I was not at all aware of -- I started using Clojure and thus Light Table after the Kickstarter had ended. For some reason I just assumed Light Table had raised a huge amount, and for that I apologize.
I was very much interested in LightTable. If I had given money to the kickstarter fund I would be very ticked to find out that those funds were being redirected to a different project (and I would not give funds to those individuals again).
I am also trying to be helpful by pointing this out (not just taking a cheap shot).
Also, my gut reaction to this is "LightTable is effectively dead". Again, not trying to be mean -- just basing this on a long history of following the industry.
All that being said, it does seem that the LightTable folks are trying to be transparent about all of this, and that much is refreshing.
If they are successful in producing something very useful, my hat is off to them. But I have to admit that it sounds kind of "pie in the sky" to me in this announcement. Please feel free to prove me wrong :-D