From the blog by status:
Furthermore, the collaboration between Status and Matrix is expected to:
This does sour my view of Element.
Matrix Foundation might have been an afterthought but it still is a valid step in ensuring at least some independence of the protocol from Element.
Nothing weird about this, it’s a common practice for organizations to redirect from .com .net and other TLDs to .org in case someone links to wrong domain by mistake. wikipedia.com and wikipedia.net both redirect to wikpedia.org and wikipedia.uk redirects to en.wikipedia.org