Community owned software

The Linux kernel is community owned software because the source code is copyrighted by many individuals and companies whereas OpenOffice.org, OpenJDK or Qt is company owned software because Sun Microsystems and Trolltech have the copyright respectively. This allows them to license the software using any license, open source or privative ones. With community owned software like the Linux kernel this is really difficult because every owner should agree to any licensing changes and it can not be licensed privately because of this.