Big companies want to pay and have “support.” Lawyers don’t like licenses, they want a proper contract.
But if it’s AGPL, I’ll move on. They’re too idealistic to deal with megacorp. They don’t sell through intermediaries, can’t/won’t be insured enough, etc.
Inevitably the small company sees $$$ and goes nuts trying to sell even when warned not to. Then the risk management and contract stuff kicks in, drags out, and kills it.
The small company blew a bunch of cash on nothing. Or they base sales projections on it. I’ve seen a couple go under.
Those are people’s livelihoods and I can’t do that to them.
That’s not limited to AGPL, but the license is a signal of that type of business. And they never do the smart thing with megacorp and sell through an established intermediary.
I mean, that's fine, though, right? If they don't have the headcount to sell support contracts, and that's not the kind of company they want to build, that's their choice. I sympathize; running a company like that doesn't sound particularly pleasant. You quickly lose focus on building the actual technology and spend too much time on enterprise sales. And if they don't want to give away their software under terms that let people put it behind a web service without releasing changes, that's also their choice.
Most companies are fine with BSD/MIT software with absolutely no support. Your argument holds absolutely no water compared to what they actually want which is to take other people's work and close it up for profit.
If they want a license to close it up, they can pay for it.
But if it’s AGPL, I’ll move on. They’re too idealistic to deal with megacorp. They don’t sell through intermediaries, can’t/won’t be insured enough, etc.
Inevitably the small company sees $$$ and goes nuts trying to sell even when warned not to. Then the risk management and contract stuff kicks in, drags out, and kills it.
The small company blew a bunch of cash on nothing. Or they base sales projections on it. I’ve seen a couple go under.
Those are people’s livelihoods and I can’t do that to them.
That’s not limited to AGPL, but the license is a signal of that type of business. And they never do the smart thing with megacorp and sell through an established intermediary.
Takes a lot of good software off the table.