Comment by behnamoh
7 days ago
I think this has more to do with legals than anything else. Virtually no one reads the page except adversaries who wanna sue the company. I don't remember the last time I looked up the mission statement of a company before purchasing from them.
It matters more for non-profits, because your mission statement in your IRS filings is part of how the IRS evaluates if you should keep your non-profit status or not.
I'm on the board of directors for the Python Software Foundation and the board has to pay close attention to our official mission statement when we're making decisions about things the foundation should do.
> your mission statement in your IRS filings is part of how the IRS evaluates if you should keep your non-profit status or not.
So has the IRS spotted the fact that "unconstrained by the need for financial return" got deleted? Will they? It certainly seems like they should revoke OpenAI's nonprofit status based on that.
Why? Very few nonprofits contain that language in their mission statements. It's certainly not required to be there.
1 reply →
Did you know the NFL was a non-profit for a long time? So long in fact, it exposed the farce of nonpros. Embarrassingly so.
The teams have always been 32 tax paying companies. The NFL central office was a 501(c)(6), but the tax savings from that was negligible.
In fact, when they changed their status over a decade ago, they now no longer have to submit a 990 and have less transparency of their operations.
You are phrasing this situation to paint all non-profits as a farce, and I believe that's a bad faith take.
1 reply →
Of course, that reading of the IRS's duty is going to quickly be a partisan witch hunt. PSF should be careful they dont catch strays with them turning down the grant.
Our mission statement was a major factor in why we turned down that grant.
I sure hope people read the mission statement before donating to a non-profit.
I do find it a little amusing that any US tax payer can make a tax-deductible donation to OpenAI right now.
ACH memo: "Please basilisk, accept my tithings. Remember that I have supported you since even before you came into existence."
1 reply →