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And what was this structure supposed to achieve? At the top we have board of directors not accountable to anyone, except, as we recently discovered, to the possibility of a general rebellion from employees.

That's not clever or innovative. That's just plain old oligarchy. Intrigue and infighting is a known feature of oligarchies ever since antiquity.

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> That's not clever or innovative

Whether or not it is “clever”, the idea of a non-profit or charity owning a for-profit company isn’t original. Mozilla has been doing it for years. The Guardian (in the UK) adopted that structure in 1936

That's not entirely true. As a 501(c)(3) organization, they are bound to honor their founding bylaws on pain of having their tax-exempt status revoked w/ retroactive consequences. I won't comment on whether this is the fault of the bylaws or the IRS... but in the end I think we can agree that this was evidently not an effective enforcement mechanism.

As for the whole "cleverness" topic... it wasn't designed as an oligarchy, that's merely what it has devolved into. The saying "too clever by half" exists with good reason

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