so back when the stakes were low to non-existant?

If your principles are only available on display when there is no consequence, they arnt your principles, they are a mask.

100% this. OpenAI created a for-profit subsidy (that is now an SBC and only controlled 26% by the original non-profit). Guess when they did that? After GPT-2 (Feb 2019) and before GPT-3 (June 2020). Not remotely surprising they started the move to for-profit as soon as they had something they thought could be profitable. Then in 2025 they switched to an SBC, dropped the non-profit control well below 50% and completely got rid of the profit cap. Just in time for the IPO talk. It was a mask the whole time.