Comment by searls
It would be funny if OpenAI turns for-profit, faceplants, and then finds new life (as Mozilla did) as a non-profit sharing its tools for free.
It would be funny if OpenAI turns for-profit, faceplants, and then finds new life (as Mozilla did) as a non-profit sharing its tools for free.
> Mozilla is a non-profit that is only sustained by the generous wealthy benefactor (Google) to give the illusion that there is competition in the browser market.
Good way of phrasing things. Kinda sad to read this, I tried to react with 'wait there is competition in the browser market', but it is not a great argument to make - without money for using Google as a default search engine, Mozilla would effectively collapse.
The main issue there is you need someway to pay the engineers in that transitional period the moment Mozilla collapses. Otherwise they leave, find new jobs, and you lose all the expertise and knowledge of the codebase.
Few months ago, the founder was talking about "AGI" and ridiculous universal basic compute. At this point, I don't even know whom to believe. My first hand experience tells ChatGPT and even ClaudeCode are no where near the expertise they are touted to be. Yet, the marketing by these companies is so immense that you get washed away, you don't know who are agents and who are putting their true opinions.
This is pretty much all that OpenAI is at the moment.
Mozilla is a non-profit that is only sustained by the generous wealthy benefactor (Google) to give the illusion that there is competition in the browser market.
OpenAI is a non-profit funded by a generous wealthy benefactor (Microsoft).
Ideas of IPO and profitability are all just pipe dreams in Altmans imagination.