[nemothekid]

As I understand it, the drivers are a point of contention, and the parent's parent explains it well.

Technically, according the AGPL, MongoDB's database drivers licenses (apache) are incompatible with AGPL, and technically should be licensed under AGPL. Now the parent says that should be fine for official drivers because MongoDB isn't going to sue themselves, but the issue is for community drivers, like the Node Driver or the Golang driver. Since the AGPL states that any software built for the exclusive use for the accompanying software must be AGPL - then it follows that community drivers should be AGPL as well.

To me that means not only can you not modify the database, but you cannot modify the drivers. And I'm also unsure if that also means that any applications that link those drivers means that they must be AGPL as well. And if your web application must be AGPL, it also means that the source of whatever service you are providing must be available as well. So in a way it doesn't just affect corporations that want to modify Mongo, it affects everyone who wants to use Mongo (with a community driver atleast).

IANAL

[ithkuil]

The copyright holder can issue multiple licences for a given product.

It's not about suing themselves'.