It also makes it impossible for a single (or multiple parties) to change the license in ways in line with the community's desire, including moving to more permissive licenses.
And I'm not really sure I get the risk here. Projects (Redis, Terraform) changed license, the community responded by forking, and the result is at worst more fragmentation. If a company doesn't think a project is worth maintaining without a more monetizable license having multiple code owners isn't going to force them to keep maintaining the software.
I'm not saying multiple owners doesn't have benefits, but it's far from clear enough to present a cut and dried policy like this I think.
> It also makes it impossible for a single (or multiple parties) to change the license in ways in line with the community's desire, including moving to more permissive licenses.
You contribute under the existing license because you approve of that license. Not allowing change is not allowing change... there is no way to make it to allow only change you like. So it is a compromise and, IMO, a good one. .. And, while not specifically relevant to my point, moving to a more permissive license isn't necessarily a good thing.
> If a company doesn't think a project is worth maintaining without a more monetizable license having multiple code owners isn't going to force them to keep maintaining the software.
My thought is that it would be better if companies didn't have this option. That releasing software under a free software license but then reserving the rights to change it later for business reasons is bad behavior. It is using free software as a marketing tool while you keep on hand on to yank it out from under your users at a whim. I think free software is better (best?) when developed to scratch an itch and released to reduce the long term maintenance and development burden (and hopefully some altruistic leanings).
To an extent I think that the outrage over redis new licence was excessive, this based on two (I think true) facts:
1. The new limitations had a temporal limitation of two years since release, that is every commit/release would automatically return to the old license after two years of the commit/release publication date
2. Using a two years old version is not that bad unless you are a cloud vendor reselling the software
3. A permissive license in this case was effectively a lot of free money given to Amazon
And I'm not really sure I get the risk here. Projects (Redis, Terraform) changed license, the community responded by forking, and the result is at worst more fragmentation. If a company doesn't think a project is worth maintaining without a more monetizable license having multiple code owners isn't going to force them to keep maintaining the software.
I'm not saying multiple owners doesn't have benefits, but it's far from clear enough to present a cut and dried policy like this I think.