From my perspective the main benefit of this is there is now a non profit that can take over administration of JS projects the community values but the original developers want to abandon.
Has such an argangment ever worked in practice? I have read here on HN about how the Apache brand is used as a dumping ground for zombie projects. Why would it be different for the Linux Foundation?
Perhaps the original developers don't want to abandon these projects, the companies they work for are just not prioritizing funding their development. By placing the Open Source project under non-profit foundation ownership, that foundation can fundraise for their projects as a whole and then hire (at least for some hours) the original developers under that funding. I'm putting words in the JS Foundation's mouth though. It's not what they are saying in that press release.
