> Musk contributed general non-restricted funding so the nonprofit can more or less do what they want with the money.
Seems like "more or less" is doing a lot of work in this statement.
I suppose this is what the legal system is for, to settle the dispute within the "more or less" grey area. I would wager this will get settled out of court. But if it makes it all the way to judgement then I will be interested to see if the court sees OpenAI's recent behavior as "more" or "less" in line with the agreements around its founding and initial funding.
Yeah, much of it will turn on what was explicitly agreed to and what the funds were actually used for -- but people have the wrong idea about nonprofits in general, OpenAI's mission is incredibly broad so they can do a whole universe of things to advance that mission including investing or founding for-profit companies.
"Nonprofit" is just a tax and wind-down designation (the assets in the nonprofit can't be distributed to insiders) - otherwise they operate as run-of-the-mill companies with slightly more disclosure required. Notice the OpenAI nonprofit is just "OpenAI, Inc." -- Musk's suit is akin to an investor writing a check to a robot startup and then suing them if they pivot to AI -- maybe not what he intended but there are other levers to exercise control, except it's even further afield and more like a grant to a startup since nobody can "own" a nonprofit.
Seems like "more or less" is doing a lot of work in this statement.
I suppose this is what the legal system is for, to settle the dispute within the "more or less" grey area. I would wager this will get settled out of court. But if it makes it all the way to judgement then I will be interested to see if the court sees OpenAI's recent behavior as "more" or "less" in line with the agreements around its founding and initial funding.