One developer (Ilya) vs. One businessman (Sam) -> Sam wins
Hundreds of developers threaten to quit vs. Board of Directors (biz) refuse to budge -> Developers win
From the outside it looks like developers held the power all along ... which is how it should be.
It's clear most employees didn't care much about OpenAI's mission -- and I don't blame them since they were hired by the __for-profit__ OpenAI company and therefore aligned with __its__ goals and rewarded with equity.
In my view the board did the right thing to stand by OpenAI's original mission -- which now clearly means nothing. Too bad they lost out.
One might say the mission was pointless since Google, Meta, MSFT would develop it anyway. That's really a convenience argument that has been used in arms races (if we don't build lots of nuclear weapons, others will build lots of nuclear weapons) and leads to ... well, where we are today :(