2. 250K+ for 4 people will give them the opportunity to focus and advance fast without financial side effects.
3. Since when the J. Fried camp is so worried about specs? They want to build a tool to scrape the data, store it local and make it avail. via standard protocol. Nothing to invent, all the tools are in place, but a lot of hard work on the boring integration/config details and testing.
And to the point again: if such thing work I guess it will not be that hard to include a tasks and project management layer that will hurt Basecamp.
2) I have said that before and will say it again. Sure seeding is way above that. But those seed money go to startups which make money. The VCs make more money off it. Nobody is getting money from this.
It's a PR to stop a competing trend, a paradigm shift that sooner or later threatens his core business.
His subtext is sorta "listen, don't give them more money because it will spoil them and there will be no product."
I see no other way to start such a project than a few geeks sitting and building it, and nothing will help them more than a few months freedom from financial distractions.
Question is if you and me will install and use these nodes?