That's not really "bad stuff" the public would care about IMO, just some internal drama.

From all the comments in this threat it seems a lot of people care about it. Of course HN public is specially tech/nerd oriented, but from the popularity here I think it's not crazy to think that non-HN audience would also care.

I really think everyone is over estimating how much people know or care about OpenAI or any of the people involved.

Half the country doesn't even understand Instagram is owned by Meta.

Yeah ok, most people won't care, but still a lot of people care, and I think it's good that this kind of information is shared with the public. Maybe it won't have a significant direct impact now, but it will make some people think about the topic, and discuss about it. And in the end, the HN community, who are already involved with this topic, might be actually contain some people that are / will be in positions where this information is very relevant.

Well, if "the public" in any way bought into OpenAI's branding claim that they were a non-profit dedicated to making something for the public benefit, they have a right to feel betrayed

As someone who was watching the brain drain of AI researchers from academia by tech giants before OpenAI was founded, their ethos and initial actual transparency was somewhat inspiring, and the first move to lock up their new frontier model struck me as disappointing and suspicious, and then actively like a betrayal once it came out that it was an exclusive licensing deal with Microsoft.

Maybe members of the public who are less invested in AI research don't feel similarly, but a lot of laypeople seem to suddenly care about AI, including the usual giant swath of techbros that were probably previously working crypto scams becoming really cultish and smug about it, but also non-tech people I know have it on their mind a lot, which is kinda new, and most of these people view it negatively, and almost all of them care because of OpenAI. Frankly your comment makes no sense to me. What are you trying to get at here?