To be fair, they would be calling shots either way, either by paying up to be a Founding member or if they couldn't do that, indirectly through their own market power which as the makers of their own browsers and chipsets for most of the hardware they move (and operating systems for all of their hardware), is substantial. Working as a "Founding" member is probably easier for everyone involved.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing that they joined. It will be useful for everyone. But Apple are being Apple. They just can't do the right thing from the start.
AOM terminology sucks here. “Founding member” just means they have a seat on the board of directors (and it’s awesome to see Apple join that), not that they were truly part of the initial founding (Apple joined in late 2017/early 2018, which is well after AOM was publicly announced in 2015).
> Founding members are Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix and NVIDIA. > [aomedia.org](https://aomedia.org)