If he raises interest in the language by saying it will be open source (which he did), I think it's fair for people to dismiss the language until he does actually open source it.

Putting stakes into a language that will essentially be DOA, like the author does seems like a crazy decision.

Yeah, even when the choice itself might be exempt from critique, stating one thing and then doing another surely isn't. Misleading posturing which can't be proven to be dishonesty but is impossible to differentiate from it seems surprisingly common for reasons I can't wrap my head around.

This happened years ago with the V programming language making a bunch of claims about the existing feature set that were not accurate and future roadmap that did not at all reflect how things went down, and it was all very bizarre and seemingly avoidable if the developer were truly committed to communicating better.

Another development process this reminds me of is the development by modders to port Oblivion to the Skyrim engine. After maybe a decade, the developers made a huge deal at the end of 2024 that they were going to finally release by the end of 2025 and made a lot of noise about it, but by the fall when no more details had been announced, someone asked in Discord about it and the lead developer directly said that it was not going to happen, with an announcement that it was "delayed" to 2026 not getting made until after people posted screenshots of this. We're now in October of 2026 and it's not clear it will be out this year, but trying to give feedback on the communication gets construed shouted down with exhortations to "let them cook". As far as I can tell, a large number of people seem to think that a suggestion that it's fine for the developers to just not keep announcing when things will be done so that they can take as much time as they want without confusing people is synonymous with telling them they need to release immediately.

you are not wrong. but like I said it is entirely his choice, which is also reasonable considering the budget Order of the Sinking Star already burned (I heard it was at AA level already)

it is not like he can get the funding via opensourcing the language to cover the development. what he and his company needs is the game to finish and release and get enough profit to cover all the expense. making a new engine is already risky enough.

you just can't ask a man to ruin his whole career/life because it benefits you.