[__app_dev__]

I the early 2000's to mid 2010's I worked at an Architecture Firm (Buildings not Software) and at the time and likely now all plotters (large printers) depend on a software called Ghostscript. It's AGPL which prevents it from being bundled with any other software unless you negotiate a very expensive contract with their sales people.

If a company risks installing it or supporting it company wide then your risk lawsuit and having your business shutdown. The work-around is that for every user's computer IT must manually install the driver (a windows DLL file).

To me if I see AGPL it makes me think that it's likely a predatory business with good lawyers; and for this reason I would stay away from it even on personal projects unless there is no alternative.

[jka]

Thank you. For me the AGPL is at the complete other end of the spectrum: it's a stake in the ground to say "this software must be allowed to progress", even if the originating entity ceases to exist.

As I'll mention in a sibling thread, I think that lawyers can be extremely risk averse in software licensing (it's their professional incentive structure) and that is my guess where this cultural meme about AGPL comes from.