You do have good points and this is not to say you are wrong or should change your thinking at all and is more for exploring good/bad ways to do it.
I would like though to reiterate what others have also noted and that there is good ways to be critical/skeptic and there are obnoxious ways to do it. Nearly every good point he makes has been made by others in forms of good well mannered questions posed to the dev team. And guess what they are answered and on goes the project without anyone feeling that its just not worth it anymore. But when its done in an obnoxious way as if from an entitled person then it causes moral issues as people are people with real feelings and not robots. Yes the occasional questioning of ones motives can be handled but when each and every member of the company is questioned as to their morals, their ability, their motives as has been done bit by bit over the last year or so then it takes its toll. I have my suspicions that its becoming a self fulfilling prophecy on one or more people.
Ask the skeptical questions as a normal well mannered person and the project is kept on its toes without the destructive method we’ve seen. Others have done it and received answers, but doesn’t cause issues so we don’t always notice it.
To be honest the motivation seems to be one of a trader trying to manipulate the market lower in order to stock up on more cheap MAID at the expense of employee’s well being.
All FUD starts with sparks of truth misrepresented. These people have been there a long time and was always hard work and nowhere to be promoted to. So its not surprising that they look after their own well being and career. The work is still being done so maybe they were all waiting for a time when their particular skills (ie R&D portion) was no longer unique since they are in the grueling work of coding. I know personally a number of people happy to work on new projects researching and writing POC code but bail when it gets to the mundane job of writing code to do the final job and I know people who love it the other way around.
So it was not surprising to see a change of staff (new ones in then older ones leave) when the project no longer was a research&development project and became one of writing the code.
True but the timings explains a lot (see above) For example
Bottom line is that if there is a huge problem then we would not be having releases while indispensable people are leaving. So maybe some of the theories are not quite right.
But yes we all have to use our discernment and consider if there is issues. But unlike the assertion there is no or a lack of transparency, we are being told of departures, times when people are away and it will affect progress. Not many companies anywhere do that in a public forum.
But of course the ones who want to discredit the developers will say that a significant release makes no difference as it allows them to promote the gloom. Its sounding like a conspiracy headed by one person. Suggest people listen to some conspiracy people (eg flat earth) and see the tactics used by conspiracy to promote that we are all sheeple being conned by those in authority (company or government or …)
Too much money to be made, but poisoning the well is not going to help if the cheap coin he buys ends up worthless because of poison.
and a better understanding of a true decentralised price network requirements