4 ms·

didn't Firefox / Mozilla set that precedent already?

wbl 3y ago
No. MozCo is for profit owned by Mozilla Foundation which does additional things to satisfy the IRS and has been that way since the begining.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  That's the same basic structure, on paper, as OpenAI, it didn't “switch to for-profit” in terms of taking the nonprofit entity and converting it to a for-profit.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Not since the beginning. They made it that way after beef with the IRS. I wish they hadn't because they are thinking too commercial (extremely high paid CEO) for instance but they have a foundation to answer to which doesn't manage them like shareholders would (eg not rewarding the CEO for dropping marketshare!). This model is the worst of both worlds imo.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
I can download the Firefox sources and everything else they produce. That they make money incidentally to that is really no problem and a positive because it provides reasonable funding. What if Firefox made a world beating browser by accident. Would they be justified in closing the source, restricting access and making people pay for it? That's what OpenAI did.
- strbean 3y ago
  That's the real distinction: does the for-profit subsidiary subsume the supposed public good of the parent non-profit? If OpenAI Co. is gatekeeping access to the fruits of OpenAI's labors, what good is OpenAI providing?
- DANmode 3y ago
  They had one of the best browsers in the world at one point. Their sell-out path was hundreds of millions of dollars from GOOG to make their search engine the default, and, unspoken: allow FF to become an ugly, insecure, red-headed stepchild when compared to Chrome. Likely part of what took priority away from Thunderbird, at the time, too.
- DANmode 3y ago
  Anyway, to answer your question, no, not okay to close up the nonprofit and go 100% for-profit in that case. Concisely, in any human matteres: Do what you say you'll do, or, add qualifiers/don't say it. Take funds from a subset of users who need support services or patch guarantees of some kind, use that to pay people to continue to maintain and improve the product.
wmf 3y ago
Mozilla doesn't have outside investors; AFAIK it's 100% owned by the foundation. OpenAI has outside investors.

wbl 3y ago

No. MozCo is for profit owned by Mozilla Foundation which does additional things to satisfy the IRS and has been that way since the begining.

dragonwriter 3y ago
That's the same basic structure, on paper, as OpenAI, it didn't “switch to for-profit” in terms of taking the nonprofit entity and converting it to a for-profit.
wkat4242 3y ago
Not since the beginning. They made it that way after beef with the IRS. I wish they hadn't because they are thinking too commercial (extremely high paid CEO) for instance but they have a foundation to answer to which doesn't manage them like shareholders would (eg not rewarding the CEO for dropping marketshare!). This model is the worst of both worlds imo.

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

I can download the Firefox sources and everything else they produce. That they make money incidentally to that is really no problem and a positive because it provides reasonable funding. What if Firefox made a world beating browser by accident. Would they be justified in closing the source, restricting access and making people pay for it? That's what OpenAI did.

strbean 3y ago
That's the real distinction: does the for-profit subsidiary subsume the supposed public good of the parent non-profit? If OpenAI Co. is gatekeeping access to the fruits of OpenAI's labors, what good is OpenAI providing?
DANmode 3y ago
They had one of the best browsers in the world at one point. Their sell-out path was hundreds of millions of dollars from GOOG to make their search engine the default, and, unspoken: allow FF to become an ugly, insecure, red-headed stepchild when compared to Chrome. Likely part of what took priority away from Thunderbird, at the time, too.
DANmode 3y ago
Anyway, to answer your question, no, not okay to close up the nonprofit and go 100% for-profit in that case. Concisely, in any human matteres: Do what you say you'll do, or, add qualifiers/don't say it. Take funds from a subset of users who need support services or patch guarantees of some kind, use that to pay people to continue to maintain and improve the product.

wmf 3y ago

Mozilla doesn't have outside investors; AFAIK it's 100% owned by the foundation. OpenAI has outside investors.