If Altman was doing something that ran directly against the mission of OpenAI in a way that all of the other stuff that OpenAI has been doing so far did not then I haven't seen it. OpenAI has been off-script for a long time now (compared to what they originally said) and outwardly it seemed the board was A-Ok with that.

Now we either see a belated - and somewhat erratic - response to all that went before or there is some smoking gun. If there isn't they have just done themselves an immense disservice. Maybe they think they can live without donations now that the commercial ball is rolling downhill fast enough but that only works if you don't damage your brand.