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Well, as one of those backers (and not one who backed for a Dev kit -- I threw a hundred bucks into the thing and got a T-Shirt because I wanted to support Palmer's ability to pursue promising tech on his terms and be taken seriously by developers by demonstrating a market), I feel a bit conflicted.
I don't want to play games on a hardware device closely associated with Facebook. I don't want my play to be tied to my social media accounts. I don't want to wonder if the Oculus Rift is gathering data about me.
As a backer, I don't expect any financial benefit from the sale, so that's right out. I do, however, feel somewhat betrayed by the sale -- when an independent developer or individual pitches something to a crowdfunding community, it's imperative (for the integrity and trustworthiness of the crowdfunding movement) that they be upfront and honest about their intentions. You can pitch a crowdfunding campaign to gain capital to develop a product and be bought out by somebody at huge personal profit -- but that's not going to gain a lot of support, generally. The support comes in from people who want to support your own passion and vision for a project, and want to ensure that you can complete or pursue it on your own terms to deliver something that doesn't have to conform to traditional risk assessment and/or can attempt to break the mold for traditional revenue streams.
And that's what backers of the Oculus Rift thought they were doing, and why they're varying degrees of angry at the sale. Nobody's begrudging Palmer's personal success, but at the same time, one can't help but feel a bit defrauded about the whole thing. Not in a legal sense, but in an interpersonal one.
As a stockholder (yes, when I saw the Rift went public, I bought some stock so that I *could* share in the potential profit of a sector that I think might be poised to explode), I'm also not particularly pleased. If the stock gets converted to Facebook shares (I haven't seen the financial details of the deal, yet), now I'm stuck with stock that is going to be primarily driven by Facebook's other interests. If I wanted to own Facebook (or other data brokering companies) stock, I'd have already done so. If they don't convert stock, and Facebook simply retains a majority share of Oculus stock, my voting power is now being diluted by somebody whose interests I don't trust and am likely to come into conflict with.
Ultimately, though? The point of contributing, Lex, was to sustain Palmer's development through a few iterative prototypes, distribute a bunch of devkits to developers who need something to work with in order to partner with Oculus, and to garner media and developer attention to grow interest in VR. That succeeded. It succeeded so well, in fact, that it also attracted interest from Facebook, to no benefit of the backer (and potentially to the backer's detriment as an interested party who doesn't want to be involved with a Facebook product). Like I said, I'm conflicted. The factual, matter-of-historical-record "point of contributing" may not be what the backer expected, but there it is.
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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades
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