I say this out of concern and not as some kind of quip, but one of the first thoughts that came to my mind after reading this was, "Well, I now know not to give the Light Table guys any money until I see a finished product."
I was very much interested in LightTable. If I had given money to the kickstarter fund I would be very ticked to find out that those funds were being redirected to a different project (and I would not give funds to those individuals again).
I am also trying to be helpful by pointing this out (not just taking a cheap shot).
Also, my gut reaction to this is "LightTable is effectively dead". Again, not trying to be mean -- just basing this on a long history of following the industry.
All that being said, it does seem that the LightTable folks are trying to be transparent about all of this, and that much is refreshing.
If they are successful in producing something very useful, my hat is off to them. But I have to admit that it sounds kind of "pie in the sky" to me in this announcement. Please feel free to prove me wrong :-D
While that's good to know, I think that the implicit upside gain hoped for from Kickstarter that underlies a lot of decisions to fund through it (especially for software) is that acheiving funding means not just that the thing gets delivered, but that an effort is made to build a sustainable business model is built around it and support the user community. The perception that, having delivered the kickstarted product and spent a couple years on it the team would abandon it and move on to a very different kind of focus (even if in the same broadly drawn domain) understandably reduces the perception that that kind of upside potential is around for a future effort.
Now, one can argue that that kind of upside expectation is somewhat irrational in the first place, of course.
It would be a shame for that to be the case. The amount given was indeed much more than reasonably used up if it supported 3 people for 2.5 years (especially in SF).