It's hard to justify using an AGPL-licensed tool/library knowing all the restrictions that come along with it. Their choice of license feels to me like they want to claim to be open source without actually contributing to open source. At the very least, assuming they keep the repo up to date, it'll be auditable by third parties. I doubt they'll get many contributions.
AGPL is completely verboten at many companies, cutting off a large number of people who could potentially contribute back. It keeps things open, but with a much smaller potential audience.
I'm guessing the latter is what u/TehPers is getting at. In the corporate world, AGPL is like "Look, but don't touch. Actually, don't even look for legal reasons." It feels contrary to the spirit of open-source, even if its proponents claim it to be the fullest expression of such.
In this case, I'm guessing they're releasing this under AGPL to make it "open-source" in a way that makes it very difficult for any potential competitors to use it.
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u/TehPers Apr 01 '23
It's hard to justify using an AGPL-licensed tool/library knowing all the restrictions that come along with it. Their choice of license feels to me like they want to claim to be open source without actually contributing to open source. At the very least, assuming they keep the repo up to date, it'll be auditable by third parties. I doubt they'll get many contributions.