[ryao]

The AGPL doesn't require them to contribute back. It only requires them to provide the code to end users upon request. No license as far as I know requires people to contribute back.

In many cases, project maintainers would not want the changed code anyway because it does not align with their vision for how things should be done. Linus Torvalds and his subsystem maintainers, for example, do not want people to send them code dumps containing the hacks people have done to private Linux source trees. They want proper commits that are done well and have been modified to comply with any feedback that they provide.

What the project maintainer here wanted were collaborators who would work with him as a team (which is not much different than what most OSS developers what), but no license requires that and it is rare to get that.

[hardwaresofton]

This is a good point, the AGPL and free software in general is really more about users than individual projects and developers.

AGPL may not have convinced Microsoft to collaborate.

[trelane]

It is in a roundabout way also about collaboration with upstream, since the users (or those working for them) are fully empowered to be developers if they so choose.

And the upstream and buy the product and get the same rights as a user.

But first and foremost it's about the users.

[trelane]

The biggest thing that GPL et al. enable is that customers are not locked in to their provider.

It's not as much about the collaboration by the vendor per se, though users would likely prefer it, and are themselves able to collaborate on equal footing.