alt Hacker NewsI guess there are two things at play. What "ground up rebuild" really means, and a mismatch between what the video says and what the article says.
The video, at the 300s mark (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gTd36cQLzY&t=300s) mentions the current state, and where they are right now, and that they'd need funding to reach the last step. And that it would be a shame to lose the previous steps, when they're "so close" or whatever. So just doing that last step, while keeping the previous ones intact, wouldn't really be "rebuilding from the ground up", at least in my opinion.
But then yeah, the article says "rebuilding things from the ground up" but I'm not sure that's really "tear everything including the community down and start from scratch" but more about how to build "Version 5", about the machines and hardware itself.
But that's me trying to be charitable and understand something that isn't 100% clearly outlined, as you say.
I think the charitable middle ground no matter how you slice it is that whatever funding they receive should in part go towards bringing talent on board that can help them grow and avoid repeating past mistakes. Maybe nobody steps down but they invest in an experienced staff.
They specifically call out the sustainability of the organisation so if it keeps PP going and even just iterating on V4 or growing it such that they can innovate on V5, that's a good use of funding that could rebuild confidence in the team and keep the overall mission going.
If they plug it all into V5, which doesn't seem to be clearly defined, then at some level that might not be any different than giving away $100k to the community. It's a gamble from a donor's point of view, might as well crowd fund it on kickstarter.