Perhaps Iota folks may have started to morph the presentation of their endeavors to prospective "investors", because of this thread I did on the legality of selling unregistered shares to investors:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1218399.0In any case, I do not take sides on this issue. I am not making any accusations of bad intentions nor intentional fraud.
If they have already raised money in the form of shares (and I have no position about whether that claim is true or not because I don't know), I will just note that per my thread above, it is seems impossible for them to now claim they are not offering an investment and have it stand up as a valid argument in a court of law w.r.t. to (at least USA) securities law.
Not at all. This is standard software sale, same way Ethereum, Augur, Gems, Voxelus etc. does it. You need to understand that this guy is a troll, he was banned for stalking, false accusations and death threats on nxtforum the day before.