Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I see it more as crowd-funding (I feel dirty using that term) a useful service with the added benefit of being able to run it yourself. The goal was to spur more/better discussions (than what private chat or crappy forums currently do).

We could certainly open up the code sooner, it just won't be polished enough to use from the get-go.

Most of all, it's an experiment for us. Do other people want this service as much as we do? Is this a valid way to try to bootstrap something? Can a service 100% (K, so 95%) open-source itself & still make ends meet?