[unintendedcons]

Lack of literacy, and lack of financial literacy, caused this misunderstanding.

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.

[ilaksh]

If they took money for "ecosystem services" and the main Godot forum operator has been paying out of pocket without recompense after the raise, they have reason to be angry.

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.

[unintendedcons]

Agreed. The foundation should absolutely be paying those costs, and take that off the shoulders of this long suffering and burned out individual contributor.

[jasonlotito]

> the main Godot forum operator has been paying out of pocket without recompense after the raise,

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.

[ozfive]

It was made clear on the W4 page that: "Additionally, W4 Games pledges to support Godot financially with no-strings-attached donations to the project."

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?

[mort96]

W4 got funding from venture capitalists. I'm certain that nobody who invested thought they were making a charitable donation to fund Godot development. It's not like the $8 million are just badly funds from donations.

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!).

[ozfive]

It wasn't fair to claim that some of the $8 million should go to Godot. What I should have said was don't make claims on your site and to people supporting and using Godot or any other open source community that aren't true.

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.

[mort96]

What claims have been made which aren't true?

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.

[unintendedcons]

Yikes, looks like NO transparency about Foundation financials!

I was expecting OpenCollective, not PayPal!