Consortium

A consortium is a group of companies or parties that agree to cooperate in a way favourable to themselves and their own common values or at least their self-interest. They try to control the bad copy problem and self-interested fork problem via the terms of a consortium license.

They also usually have a governance organization to enforce this, and to negotiate tricky situations such as mandatory patent licenses or disputes.

The IETF can also be seen as a consortium.