A model that could align incentives better is putting the IP in a trust with the development company as a trust management corporation, with developers, managers, &c, functioning as trustees. Users buy in to the trust -- their license will be a kind of share -- and thus users are beneficiaries.<p>In order to make any use of the project, users also have to be trustees. This model allows restrictions on what they use it for, what they disclose, &c, because users must agree to certain terms as part of becoming trustees.<p>Because the development company is a trustee, their incentives are different from those of software companies that own IP: trustees have a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of beneficiaries (even though trust management companies can have their own shares and shareholders, they nevertheless have a fiduciary duty to the beneficiaries).<p>One of the benefits of open source is that it's possible to arrange for succession if a company stalls out. No one is breaking the law by continuing to develop on the basis of the old IP. Organizing the software as a trust with users as beneficiaries makes it relatively easy to manage succession, as well, since the beneficiaries are the ultimate owners of the property contained in the trust and have a power to appoint new trustees as well as remove old ones.