The interesting thing is that the vast majority (and for the first year+ all) of the contributors to LLVM who donated massive amounts of time and resources to make the relicensing happen were not from any company that was blocked from contributing.

I happen to know because I was one person who donated my time. I was not in any way blocked. We were trying to find a way to help more people (and yes, companies, because companies tend to pay people) contribute to LLVM because that is one of the things that makes the project stronger.

So saying that the change was driven by these handful of contributors seems really off base. And in fact, my experience during the process was that the most motivated people were individual contributors, if anything pushing and pulling companies along (by finding good ways to address their potential concerns with any change like this).

Anyways, that was my experience from being involved in the process. YMMV of course.