If they try to sell it to others, they're opening themselves up to criticism about the price and what you get for it, at least.
If the tone was reasonable, but you and I both know it rarely is. Voice of experience here. One could argue that's the tradeoff. If you want money for your thing, you have to tough out the haters. But, that just incentivizes people to not bother sharing their project or turn it into a product for sale. I mean, none of this will make people rich, so it's a side job, and we all get enough confrontation in our day job. I shudder to think how many cool things I'd have bought never appeared because people can't moderate themselves if something costs a bit more than they prefer or doesn't provide their "must have" feature.
I'm not disagreeing with the accountability being asked, it's the tone that bothers me. I understand that previous scams in the retro communities makes folks wary, but surely there's a middle ground. I don't remember anything else about this team suggesting prior shady behavior, and the videos are light on details no doubt because they are truly light on answers. Things are moving fast, people are excited, and it's a rag tag group of folks who have probably never done anything like this.
But here we have someone who appears to be soliciting investors for a rather large investment (some fraction of millions of dollars), and was even apparently looking at soliciting investments from the general public. (That got quashed by laws that stop that sort of thing—laws that exist for the very reason that people tend to come up with slightly crackpot "investment" ideas that they don't explain well and "regular" folks have lost money on these sorts of things.)
I find it a shame that his explanation about trying to see if a crowdsourced share option was viable and relating that it was not is being seen as sketchy. I mean, I'd look into it if I needed a way to raise 7 figures. And, when I determined it would not work, I'd probably spend a few moments in a video explaining why so I didn't have to keep replying to all the well intentioned comments suggesting (without doing any research) that I should just open a crowdfunding campaign and sell shares. I do see he is trying to shortcut the process (the usual US option would be to domicile a C Corp in Delaware and just sell shares, but there are tax implications and managing a C Corp-like financial instrument in all the community geographies is a royal pain in the rear.) As you say, the rules prevent folks from shortcutting the process, but tax laws in the US are often behind the state of art in investing (and I assume similarly in other countries), so it's not a bad idea to check to see if there are loopholes that reduce the burden.
There's a lot of arm waving here about how what he's doing is going to be good for the community, and maybe even in some way "community owned," but no actual details. The lack of both specific details and evidence that he knows what he's doing reminds me of certain Kickstarters that ended up leaving contributors with nothing but a hole in their bank accounts. He should be asked, and should answer, hard questions when this kind of money is involved. (And no, being able to "negotiate bedtime with a toddler" doesn't give you any relevant experience for negotiating a business deal like this.) That all this might end in tears is a perfectly reasonable worry, here.
I can't argue the "how is this going to work, exactly" concern you share, but I feel like I can be excited for them in working to buy the name/logo while at the same time wondering how they will pay for it. Maybe the end result is to rely on businesses like mine to fund without expectations of return, and restructure when the purchase completes. Getting 1000 interested community members to pony up USD $10K each would provide them with USD$10MM to work with, more than what is needed to buy things outright. 1000 is a lot, but not completely unrealistic given the size of the community. $10K is a lot, but most of the people who care are in their 50s or 60s, and I'd bet 1000 of them either have a hobby to costs that much a year or waste that much on something else they could skip for 12 months.
And if it's true that he's been using the names of Commodore ex-staff without permission, and even implying that they endorse the project, that's stepped way over the line and would indicate that the guy is literally perpetuating a fraud. (To be clear, I have not verified that, though. I just heard it from a friend of Bil Herd.)
Using folks' names without permission is a big issue, and that should be dealt with quickly, but we are taught to never assume malice where ignorance is likely. "Bil said you told him you were excited about this, so we used your name" could easily be the issue (if, as you say, the claim is verified).
I'm not asking folks give the team a free pass, but my original comment lamented the negative tone of the initial response. No matter how risky the venture might be, even the possibility to buy a storied company name is a big deal, and a celebratory one at that. Maybe they can't raise the funds, maybe they can't make the good business plan, not sure. I still appreciate them trying. Dismissing it as not "big news" just seems petty and vindictive, mocking the months of effort in decidedly uncomfortable meetings and research areas on how this might be possible.
And no, I am not shilling for the effort. Full disclosure, Christian sent me an email a month or so ago noting he had something to talk to me about, but I did not get back to him in time to hear about it before the video.
