It’s not a »risk which was taken«. ownCloud started out as a pure open source project and the company was formed later.

Having it under a free software license / open source is exactly so that the community can step in when there is a problem with the company.

Disclaimer: I am one of the people who left ownCloud for Nextcloud. Also one of the first contributors to the project when it was still very young, and the company didn’t exist yet.