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I'll be interested to see what the restrictions are on the material they put out in the "Brabham-Engineer" stream, which is one area where they could conform to some of the values of the Open Source Initiative.
Leaving terminology aside, I see this less as a corporate begging bowl and more of a traditional crowdfunding / kickstarter like project (perhaps a little in the line of the rather fun Mars One initiative). They're selling a variety of packages that get you 'something' and a mild feeling of having participated - if this raises them £250k (and it just might looking at the progress of it so far), and they use this, combined with value of Brabham brand, and whatever they themselves are putting into it (be it cash or blood / sweat / tears) to move to something which is likely to be more meaningfully funded then I don't think there's much of an issue.
It's a little like the old "Racing for Britain" model that funded drivers in the 1980s, or even the "Racing for Holland" model where you could buy a square on the Dome LMP and have your name/logo etc on it in an entirely unreadable way, but feel a little bit more involved because somehow you'd contributed something.
I'll be interested to see what phase 2 of funding looks like - to continue with the Mars One analogy, they've been quite creative in terms of everything from traditional contribute a bit and get a t-shirt, through to contribute something and get entries to a competition for a sub-orbital flight (which might or might not happen), or enter the contest to become a Mars colonist. Can Brabham continue in this sort of vein? I like to think so, in terms of things like factory visits, pit visits at races, appearances of their car / drivers / team at events etc.
Inherently all of this starts to point at what I've long suspected - that the old sponsorship model introduced by Lotus in the 1960s has increasingly run its course, and that motorsport in general and sportscar racing in particular does not at present have a sustainable business model. If correctly done crowd funding helps redress this then I'm not sure I'm going to grumble, and who knows, I might even put my hand in my pocket...
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