What Happened to Community CubeSat Projects?

[Skript88]

I have been exploring the technologies implemented in cubeSats since as you may know or guess I'm obsessed with space.

While researching attitude control technology I came across a forum page discussing magnetorquers which lead me to this http://forums.mossat.org/index.php a project which was at one point thriving with discussion and promise. 

The goal of this project scientifically seems rather interesting, To study the growth of moss in different gravitational environments. The documentation on the experiment was very intriguing. However I was disappointed to find that relevant posts have seemed to have ceased late 2015. (anything more recent appears to be spam bots.)

On their forum (not this one) they had also discussed joining forces with these guys https://sites.google.com/site/kommunitycubesat/home Another presumably cancelled cube sat project inspired by KSP, with a slightly more ambitious goal of imaging the moon.

This personally saddens me here we had a whole bunch of people that came together and wanted to do space stuff, they were serious about it too! The MosSat people were doing ground experiments and getting in touch with biologists, KSI LIS-1 had actually gotten a piggy back launch ride with a moon lander aboard a falcon 9 rocket. Real science was going to be done here and perhaps finally a non-government space program could have shut all those moon landing conspiracy theorists up for once (though unlikely as people assume the falcon 9 booster landing is a fake as well.) It's just sad to see both projects presumably gated by funding. 

Though the projects may still have some fight in them I still find it interesting that since so much discussion of the projects are documented with some digging someone could easily recreate all the plans that were made for each of these projects. 

I personally would love to start my own cubeSat mission, although I would not want to lead a community if I was unsure if the project would get off the ground (literally) as In the case of failure I would want to bring as little people down with me as possible. What Intimidates me mainly however is funding as that seems to be the metaphorical death trap of most projects. Crowed funding is what many people turn to often finding out that it's really hard to get people to fund something that doesn't offer them a product. Quite sadly space exploration and research falls right into that niche.

What are your views on cubeSat related projects in general? Should projects like this as KSP community projects be continued? Many projects like these fall below the successful funding threshold and are left to fade on some distant server somewhere. Space isn't easy.

Edited July 11, 2016 by Skript88