They brought it on themselves. They chose the name OpenAI. It was a terrible choice on their part, and the repeated criticism is a direct result of that choice.
I definitely agree, "open" in the name is pretty annoying and wrong. I'm a bit torn though - I tend to think GPT-3 is approaching a level where ML is becoming dangerous. Spam bots + GPT-3 is not my idea of a fun time. So the restrictions they put on usage do seem important.
Regardless of that moral question, I don't think a fully open model on the level of GPT-3 is even possible. Given the required cost to train and the expertise involved, big tech will always be a few years ahead. And it's unlikely they would give it away with how much they invest in creating it. Unless capitalism suddenly ends, I don't see any of the major tech companies parting with state of the art ML.
