Like I indicated, I wasn't necessarily defending Deer Hawk. I know nothing about them. It just seemed from reading others comments it had been assumed rather quickly that anything that doesn't follow traditional publishing models is out to scam writers, which doesn't seem to be the case here.
I don't think anyone has been saying that Deer Hawk is out to scam writers. The questions that have been asked have been about its resilience as a business, the experience of the people involved, and the product that they put out. All of those things can be problematic in entirely up-front and honest businesses.
Successful publishing is the product of more than good intentions, after all. It requires experience, knowledge of the industry, skill, adequate capital, and a certain amount of luck.
And the people who pay the penalty when things go wrong are the authors. Have you read
this post about how publishers fail? None of the businesses in there were any kind of scam, but authors still ended up with books badly published or not published at all; in many cases, the rights to their works were tied up in bankruptcy proceedings.
The conversations in this room are not intended to be nasty, nor to simply highlight scams (although scams are highlighted here). They're to tease out
whatever aspects of a business might jeopardize writers, so that anyone doing business with them is making an informed decision.
My comments were directed at the monolith of traditional publishing and its inability to move forward and try out new business models.
I would ask you to unpack the phrases "monolith of traditional publishing" and "inability to move forward and try out new business models", with specific examples, but it would be a digression from this thread. Instead, I'll just say that it sounds like you've been reading blogs from that segment of the community which has built its identity around a particular view of trade publishing-as-dinosaur -- a view that is not nearly as obviously true as that sub-community assumes it is. I'd recommend a broader exposure to all sides of the industry to get a more balanced perspective.