True, but as a community we should be making sure assemblers like Burnin are looked after. Not only as a thank you for the amount of work he's done, but also from the point of view that if assemblers lose money there is no incentive to do it, meaning they won't, thus killing the DIY boards market completely.
I hate to break it to you, but him developing and building a board, is
not charity. Customers paid, so it is just regular old
business. There is absolutely no need to 'look after' the person you made a business deal with.
As much as I sympathise with the board builders, burnin took his own risk in developing a board for Avalon chips, and taking pre-orders dependant on pre-ordered hardware. It is not right that all this risk is fully offloaded to his customer base, and I'm quite sure what he offers is unlawful in the EU. You can't deliver nothing and still take a part of the money for yourself (be it in fiat or electrical components). I am quite (90%) sure that falls under the label
entrepreneurial risk, at least here in the EU.
to get technical he could in fact sue YOU as you implicitly agreed to send him Avalon chips so that he can complete your boards. By not sending the chips you have broken the agreement/contract & thus probably have little legal recourse.
Notwithstanding this point, I maintain that it is in everyone's best interest to work something out as amicably as possible & the level of venom on this thread is getting out of hand.
The first thing to do is approach Avalon officially (as Zefir says he has now done) and see what they are willing to do to make this right. Flaming group buy organizers and board makers only encourages infighting which will get us collectively nowhere. First things first.