alt Hacker Newsthrough all of this, it really feels like rebble didn't know what they want (as they say). the future collaboration with eric also sounds like they don't know what they want. they want a third party mediator for... something. Eric was already prepared to pay them per user, which seemed generous to me to begin with.
It sounds to me like Rebble (the board + community) should figure out what they want before trying to proceed, lest they further waste time and good-faith negotiating capital. like are they unhappy with the previous payment rate per user? or something else?
To me it speaks to the fact that Rebble is not really an organization that is in a position to actually negotiate a long term deal with another company and go through all the trials and tribulations that involves.
That is not a criticism of them nor is it surprising, their responsibility up to now has been to maintain a core set of open source software. A loosely structured control structure is entirely appropriate for that task. But it really does not work when instead of bringing one person representing the company to a negotiation, you have half a dozen people who all have their own thoughts and levels of interest and commitment, some of whom will resort to community action if they don't like something about the process.