Kickstarter is to help launch the infrastructure around it - the prototype at http://simpla.io is the frontend library, you can't save changes yet. We've built out most of the actual API (it's pretty minimal, clientside does all the heavy lifting), just need a few more things in place to get to private/public beta that we won't be able to do in a reasonable timeframe without a bit of extra runway - hence the small campaign.
The API is intentionally transparent. The idea is that you're still writing in the CSS language (even if with non-spec features), rather than a DSL. So if you ever did want to rip Rucksack out and go back to-spec, you'd just run it and grab the output. Your overall structure, logic, and code would look pretty much the same, just with the (expanded) additions of the individual features Rucksack added. This often isn't the case when you're writing in a preprocessor, especially on a big project the input often ends up looking very little like the output.
And to clarify, yep Rucksack certainly isn't to-spec (present or future). It's a collection of handy features and shortcuts, like the compass/nib/bourbon of PostCSS. As timdorr points out, you could absolutely use it with cssnext (we do exactly that over at Simpla), you'd probably just want to disable autoprefixing, since cssnext does that for you.
Yeah we're thinking of enabling users to pass through option blocks to the individual plugins (like how precss and cssnext does things), the problem is that not all features match 1:1 with plugins. Legacy Fallbacks, for instance, is a sub-collection of 5 plugins, and passing a nested object to each of these would be awkward. Also most of the plugins used (and all of the ones I built for it) are pretty straightforward and don't take any options.
But feel free to chuck an issue up on github, this behaviour probably needs to be accounted for sooner or later.
Well on a personal level, I really love living in Australia (in melbourne btw), so I stay. But to answer the other points - in a straight comparison to SF yes it's expensive, but wages are also good so it tends to even out. Internet speeds are a joke, but most commercial buildings and all co-working spaces have 100mb cable, so it's a non-issue for work. As for the government, well, "not particularly technologically minded" is about the kindest thing you could say about the current party, but it's not a factor in my day-to-day work, and not enough reason for me to pack up and leave the country.
To me this is a bit of a 'baby with the bathwater' scenario. CSS has problems (particularly lack of namespacing), but I don't think the solution is to just pack up shop on stylesheets and port everything to js. If the argument is about logic, then postCSS and manipulating the CSSOM are cleaner approaches IMO. And with web components the modularity concern is pretty much entirely mitigated. There's definitely an argument to be made about javascript's role styling, but I think it should be complimentary alongside the purely declarative stylesheet.
I try to do just 10-15min each morning, though more often than not I don't even achieve that. I think the act of just forcing yourself to sit still and not do anything puts a lot in perspective, and if it's just 10 minutes you can't use the excuse that you don't have time. I've tried a few apps, the only one that I've found to really help is Headspace, has good no-nonsense advice.
Find people with the problem you're solving, and point them to your project. Quora is great for this. Obviously don't just look for the sell (or the star, in this case), but if people are asking about source control, git, etc. they'd probably benefit from knowing about cli-github. (neat project btw, looks like a nice compliment to https://github.com/github/hub).
Depends how you define success. Can't beat Silicon Valley for investment opportunity, but by the same token as others have said its not all about getting funded as fast and highly as possible. If you can reach your customers from where you are then you can grow from where you are. Take for eg: Aus/NZ (where I'm operating), certainly not renowned for VC activity, yet has it's share of very successful startups (Xero, Canva, Atlassian, etc.)
Use something like https://icomoon.io and just mix-n-match between sets. Personally I've found that no one set covers everything I need (though I generally default back to the Material Design font), and there are enough sets with a similar aesthetic that you can still achieve a consistent look.
Another vote for ES6 - it covers the most important fixes from coffeescript and is the next standard, so you're not writing in a DSL (don't have to worry about it going out of fashion, wider talent-pool in the future, etc.). And with Babel you can use it now and just transpile back to ES5.
https://gionkunz.github.io/chartist-js/ - Doesn't exactly follow material guidelines out-of-the-box, but super hackable and easy to theme, looks pretty decent by default, and probably the most straightforward js charting library I've ever come across.