You pretty much know if you have commitments to funding. You talk to people. You gauge market sentiment and the competitive landscape.
Then you are putting yourself in jeopardy on economic reality grounds. Even if the fine print says people can cancel, if everyone understands that it isn't really going to happen, then it isn't real.
Now you are grasping at straws.
I talk to people all the time in private messages (and public forum discussions) and gauge interest level. It is completely detached from potentially anonymous buyers of a crowdfund. Polling the market is not a conspiracy.
I specifically wrote refutations to #2 and #3 up thread.
I understand. I nevertheless consider them to be issues of significant concern, especially when all is taken together.
Well of course you consider anything to weaken a competitor of Monero to be something worth spreading FUD about.
If people aren't dumb, I am sure they can figure it out that developer who has put his life for 3 years into something isn't going to just disappear and let his baby just die. And surely if the product is any good, there will be other devs offering to work on it and receiving donations.
The entire argument for open source is that the community takes over what is worthwhile to the community.
I am simply amazed after all your dogma to me about the glory of open source and nothing can beat Monero because open source always wins then when I talk about using open source to sustain a product after release, you think the users of crypto-currency aren't going to trust in open source. Thus you are saying it isn't open source that is keeping Monero strong but rather some promised control by some key persons such as fluffypony. But did fluffypony ever promise anything?