There are projects which have managed to do so, like KDE's QT, which was closed source but negotiated an escrow license with the community to release the code a

There are projects which have managed to do so, like KDE's QT, which was closed source but negotiated an escrow license with the community to release the code as BSD if the owner company ever stopped development. https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqt_announcement/ https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqt_announcement/