I started development and showed a functional proof of concept even before the crowdsale, and later @bzee and I designed and developed a novel way of doing divisible tokens on SAFE which we also published on SAFE testnet. Both are broken and mostly obsolete now, which illustrates the predicament nicely.
There has never been such a condition, but I did specify at the time of the crowdsale that parts of the raised funds could be spend on projects that support the goals of Project Decorum. That obviously applies to SAFE itself, and this was only a loan.
Besides, it was the only logical course of action. If SAFE fails the MAID value is zero, so sitting on it while MaidSafe needed funds only increased that risk. Same thing for dumping them on the market, since MaidSafe at least partially depends on that market for its funding.
None of the core ideas have been changed, almost all of the available information and plans are still relevant.
20 minute updates would be mostly filled with fluff wasting everyone’s time, there is just very little to share until the API is ready for proper development.