It's clear to me that Godot Foundation funds Godot development, and W4 took VC money for funding ecosystem services. Absolutely different things.
I hope this author makes their peace and apologizes or transfers responsibility for the forums to the Godot Foundation.
If, after money being raised like this, no one gives them money to pay for the forum (including all previous expenses) which they have been running out of pocket and provides a core service to the community, they should shut down the forum and delete the posts.
My understanding is that this is a community-run forum. Nothing in the post suggests they are asking for money to run the forum.
Further:
> Juan is painting this picture that Godot is out of money and begging on social media, meanwhile with $8M in his wallet
That's a flat-out lie.
I don't know; there is no evidence presented, and what is presented in the post is inaccurate.
As of right now, I can safely assume this is someone who wants to cash in.
If W4 Games has received 8 million dollars in funding but hasn't contributed any of it back to the Godot project as stated in their pledge, then there would be an inconsistency between their promise and their actions.
The text on the W4 page explicitly mentions their commitment to donating improvements made to Godot back to the community AND supporting the project financially. If they have not fulfilled these promises despite having significant funding, it would raise concerns about their integrity and whether they are truly dedicated to their stated mission.
Let's see the transparency of donations to the Godot foundation?
And I'm sure those investors would be very, very angry at W4 if W4 just ran away with the money which was invested to fund development of products and services to give W4 a revenue stream, donated it to the Godot Foundation instead. In fact, I'm betting that would be quite illegal (and if it's not, the investors would certainly fire the CEO if that happened!).
This person just wants some compensation for covering the forums for Godot which sounds reasonable to me. The way it was worded wasn't clear but the underlying intention was clear.
I think it's completely reasonable for this person to not want to host the forums out of pocket for no compensation any more. If that was all this post was about, I don't think anyone would have any problems with it. It's all the stuff about Godot being a scam and complaints about how W4's seed funding from VCs isn't being donated to the Godot Foundation that's absolutely baffling.
I was expecting OpenCollective, not PayPal!