alt Hacker NewsEven getting the licensing right isn't sufficient. They could license it as MIT today, close source it again tomorrow, and within a few releases no one would be using the MIT version.
Unless someone is interested in maintaining a full fork. It's the same reason Google can do whatever they want with Chromium even though it's technically open source. No one else has the resources/will to maintain it so there's no credible threat of a fork.
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Between Microsoft on one hand and all the other browser companies (Opera, Brave etc) on the other, I wouldn't be so sure.
Following Google's lead is massively cheaper than having a custom fork or engine, but it's not impossible. If Google does something wild and unpalatable to all these companies, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a Linux Foundation version of Chromium, with custom skins on top.
That could even get Mozilla to jump on the bandwagon, especially if they lose 9x percent of their revenue due to Google's antitrust remedies, which is not that unlikely.
That's not a great example. Maintaining a full fork of QNX would not be terribly complex compared to maintaining a full fork of Chromium. The latter targets standards which are moving and evolving. Nobody cares which version of POSIX QNX is compatible with. (Also, Chromium is much bigger)
I think a fork could have some maintainers. I'd be more worried about people wanting to put new features in than anything else.