I don't have much sympathy for that argument. AGPL (or dual-licensed AGPL + commercial) is the simple countermeasure for freeloaders. Most tech companies won't touch it with a 20-foot pole.
Didn't seem to be such of a silver bullet for MongoDB, which used AGPL and still were forced to abandon it in favor of an even stronger version made by themselves (the SSPL, which is an AGPL on steroids).
I'm not sure if there are more such cases, but clearly with this one, AGPL was not enough.
I guess the issue is: if you have freeloaders, who are making all the money you would need to keep the OSS project alive, AGPL doesn't help you in any way. They are free to get the code as-is, run it, and serve their customers. Not sure why everybody suggests AGPL+Commercial as the perfect solution, it doesn't seem to solve anything for that case.
> Most tech companies won't touch it with a 20-foot pole.
This!, in my experience lawyers will deny the use of AGPL software, even when there is no risk (from my point of view). Many companies have already a list of blessed licenses, and AGPL is not part of the ones I'm aware of.
This phenomenon is mostly just GPL-phobia. Microsoft spent billions in the 90s to convince corporate legal that the GPL is "viral" in ways it is not. You could simply rename the license to something other than the letters G-P-L and this would go away.
I'm not sure if there are more such cases, but clearly with this one, AGPL was not enough.
I guess the issue is: if you have freeloaders, who are making all the money you would need to keep the OSS project alive, AGPL doesn't help you in any way. They are free to get the code as-is, run it, and serve their customers. Not sure why everybody suggests AGPL+Commercial as the perfect solution, it doesn't seem to solve anything for that case.