people love a train wreck, + it has the lesson of being careful of who to pick for your cofounder, and about giving second chances to people who screw you over.
I'd like to believe that this site is better than that – that it's not about watching train wrecks. The problem with picking co-founders isn't that people don't know it's important – it's that they ignore it anyway or don't know how to tell. It's about as useful as a surgeon general's warning on cigarettes.
Lesson: in the articles of incorporations, spell out the arbitration process and include clauses that prevent out of control behavior - like automatic forfeiture of company stock.
This saddens me as well, as I was hoping this independent financing model would succeed.
But I definitely see a few lessons here:
1. The need to have performance/milestone based equity sharing vs blindly giving a person 50% based on their POTENTIAL.
2. The need to have a checks and balance system that places control of the domain/trademarks in hands other than the programmer or developers. That way the person controlling the domain can have some control, while the developer has other control (passwords, access). And a third party/person who may control the finances. (Domain/Trademarks/Copyrights)+technology+finances. Like the checks and balances of Legislative+Executive+Judicial systems.
3. The need to repair or remove faulty systems/people at the first signs of unreliability.