This article is as clear and thorough as I could wish, just wonderful.
Also, I really really like this term “relicensing risk” as it brings a new frame to the permissive/copyleft and related discussion. It makes it clear that relicensing (generally meaning for restrictive control, removing freedoms) is a harmful pattern.
I linked this in the FLOSS history wiki article, where else might it be good to note?
The “rug pull” of the VC backed FLO companies is real.
Will snowdrift have protections against this in its bylaws ?
TSYS Operating Agreement being drafted will have prohibitions on re licensing in the parent company LLC operating agreement (generally) and in the individual series agreements (specifically) (and allowing for things like code escrow , warranty support etc). One of the lines of business is a solar calculator SAAS and it’s going to use a franchising model. It will always be fully FLO (AGPL v3) . The particular released production revenue generating tags may be escrowed by the franchise or other support / availability etc protections might be negotiated.
We are also creating two LLCs for the podcast and electronic design automation stacks we’ve developed which will be run as foundations (we call them stewards). They are de facto non profits , but unfortunately to actually setup proper non profits and integrate them with the main business is way more of a pain. So we just craft the operating agreements in such a way that the organization will never produce a profit.
We are structuring the for profit businesses as cooperatives (maybe via LLC maybe via actual coop entity) as an additional defense against rug pull.
Governance is so important.
Well, the most basic is that we don’t require contributors to use a CLA or similar (so, our codebase has multiple contributors who would all need to agree to any license change). Beyond that, we will have in the Bylaws (and have something already in the Articles) that ingrains our core mission and values, and we have a section about dissolution requiring resources go to an aligned non-profit.
I think the bigger question is about our role in the ecosystem with all this corporate influence. We are working to have a platform to fund projects without needing that corporate backing. We would want to also make sure any project clearly and transparently describe any corporate influence they have nonetheless.