how this type of licencing affects people that are not google et. al. in big companies? e.g. I am bootstrap/indie dev doing a small SaaS? Should I be concerned?
Short answer: yes. The AGPL should be avoided at all costs because it has never been robustly tested in court and its unclear what the licensing implications actually are.
There are various explanations in plain english sometimes offered about how the AGPL will apply. None of these are true.
Companies that have a made a business decision to provide AGPL licensed code do so with the understanding that no serious business will ever consider using such a product in their software stack. If you choose an AGPL licensed product it will (rightly) become a gigantic headache at some point. It will certainly become a problem if anyone does due diligence.
Most companies that provide AGPL, including us (ParadeDB) also offer a commercial license for interested companies. Several successful software companies (Grafana, MinIO, Citus, etc.) have chosen to be AGPL to thread the needle between being true OSS while also managing to monetize their offering :)
There are various explanations in plain english sometimes offered about how the AGPL will apply. None of these are true.
Companies that have a made a business decision to provide AGPL licensed code do so with the understanding that no serious business will ever consider using such a product in their software stack. If you choose an AGPL licensed product it will (rightly) become a gigantic headache at some point. It will certainly become a problem if anyone does due diligence.