Can someone with more business sense than me explain this? Why would employees want to buy an 8 year old product with no traction? At face value this sounds like a "holding the bag" scenario, not?
Basically, the investors lost interest but the team is passionate and see a path to success. They won't be maintaining the old product, they're going in new direction.
The founder lost interest, he started a new company and he is the CEO of it!
> To ensure continuity for users and fans, as well as to continue building what we regard as an important technology, Dark Inc has sold the assets – the Darklang language, the blog, the hosted service, the Discord, etc, darklang.com, etc – to a new company started by Dark Inc's former employees.
(from https://blog.darklang.com/goodbye-dark-inc-welcome-darklang-...)
In other words, there's a new company (Darklang Inc.) that has purchased the assets of Dark Inc. (for probably relatively little money). This clears the cap table, making it easier for the former employees (now founders) to raise money for the new corporation.
They want to maintain the community they have because it's the real asset for any open-source project, which is the direction they're betting on.
Only if they are buying it for what the investors had already put into it, which is not likely. They most likely discussed how much the investors values physical assets and trademarks the company holds (like how much they are likely to get back in a bankruptcy) plus whatever makes a deal fair and maintain a happy cordial relationship with said investors for future endeavors.