this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2026
491 points (98.2% liked)
Technology
88199 readers
3915 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
enshitification always makes sense. Hear me out.
Governance
It seems the Trustees can't be trusted
And yet they had an IPO 2 years ago
But it's a foundation, with a charitable goal....
And yet they had an IPO 2 years ago
So they are a company but also a foundation.
How?
Clever accounting, one entity invoices the other and whatnot. One entity could be the reseller for the goods the other one is producing for example. Similar arrangements (no need for a foundation, just invoicing between your own entities) like that are often done e.g to pay your taxes in a lower rate jurisdiction than where you earn your money. You could set up a company that sells stuff and another company to hold the IP and then pay royalties. Etc.
ClosedAI is looking to do something similar, go from non-profit to for-profit. Personally I'm of the opinion that such a thing should warrant investigations and possibly indictments for fraud. Because it IS fraud, or at least false advertising. If I buy a Raspberry Pi, knowing that it's a foundation with a good cause, and the next day they announce they're starting a for-profit company to handle everything, that's very much false advertising, as the foundation model was be one of the factors in choosing which product to buy. If that makes sense.
Yes, companies need to make money. It's kind of what they do.
Yeah just like cancer needs to spread and grow. It's just what cancer does. It does make sense.
But, never the less, we're still going to cut the cancer out someday.
Either that, or the cancer will end up killing us.
And, curiously, kill itself in the process.
We sure are, comrade, we sure are.