[sogrady]

By way of disclosure, I'm the author of the linked piece.

That said, having spoken to most of the parties involved prior to their decisions to relicense, I can tell you that investors were a major motivating factor in many if not all cases.

In certain instances, this was because a particular investor convened private meetings between groups of commercial backers of open source projects - both portfolio companies and not - to propose non-open source alternatives, and companies went along with it. In other cases, board members were swayed by arguments from these same investors. Either way, pressure to try and replicate proprietary software profit margins from investors was a significant, if not sole, motivating factor in the decisions in question.

If you look at the history of investors in many of the companies involved the pattern is notable.