The same reason some people dislike the GPL, but a bit more extreme.
One of the cool things about open source is that you can go and use Open Source code for things that the original author may have never even thought of. So your implementation of some novel algorithm might end up being useful in some situation that you were not aware of or maybe did not even exist when you wrote the code. While it seems idealistic, it is not that uncommon.
Now for the GPL license, depending on version, it is not a huge deal if you borrow GPL code. It is a fairly standard license that a lot of projects use. And of course GPL is compatible with a lot of different licenses, making it possible to distribute your projects under the terms of the GPL including code with compatible licensing.
Something interesting to note is that AGPLv1 is not GPL compatible. AGPLv3 is not GPLv2 compatible. GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are compatible, since GPLv3 was written to intentionally allow this usage. (Note: IANAL or an expert; so this should be taken with a grain of salt.)
In the end, this is why permissive licenses have gained a lot of popularity. It is immensely aggravating to people when things that are technically possible and not spiritually immoral are prevented by legal barriers that feel unnecessary. When the ZFS on Linux project faces trouble because of software licensing, it feels like a farce and a waste of time and resources.
Now imagine that the reasoning for the license choices being incompatible was not to protect user rights, and not simply a matter of differing policies between different organizations and their open source releases, but rather transparently a ploy to protect a profit model. This is where people's aggravation turns to anger, because it then feels like the open source label is being used to pull people in, then the more restrictive licenses are being used to seek rent forever after.
The reality is obviously not quite that grim. In fact, perhaps because of licenses like the Timescale license and SSPL, people have come around to AGPL in quite a significant way. The Overton window of open source licenses from corporate open source releases may have tilted a bit more towards the 'restrictive' side.
I don't think there's anything actually immoral about protecting one's own profit model. It does, at least in some sense, dilute what it means for software to be open source; if AGPL becomes popular, it will be more likely to encumber more projects with its requirements. Of course, in many cases, the ownership of the copyright will be spread among multiple parties, and so everyone is on a level playing field, and so other than the burden of ensuring you adhere to the restriction there's no real reason to feel that it is 'unfair' anymore than copyleft licenses already are.
At the end of the day, GPL was a legal solution to a community problem, and it imperfectly encodes an idea. There is no perfect encoding of that idea, so it is bound to cause some frustration for where the expectations mismatch with reality.
> Now imagine that the reasoning for the license choices being incompatible was not to protect user rights, and not simply a matter of differing policies between different organizations and their open source releases, but rather transparently a ploy to protect a profit model. This is where people's aggravation turns to anger, because it then feels like the open source label is being used to pull people in, then the more restrictive licenses are being used to seek rent forever after.
Anyone interpreting AGPL that way is being ridiculous, though. If you treat the software as fully open source then AGPL doesn't harm you and there is no rent seeking. Any paid licenses are only for companies that don't want to embrace that piece of software being open source.
AGPL isn’t this, of course. Though for a project that enforces copyright re-assignment and thus retains copyright, you certainly could use AGPL as a similar sort of deterrent, because end users and even contributors are beholden to different rules than the copyright owners. But this is not really any different with GPL versus AGPL, and it’s been a well-accepted practice to do things like dual-license FOSS projects as commercial products. I believe even Richard Stallman believed this to be an acceptable practice. Nonetheless, if people want the same rights as the copyright holders, they need to pay rent, unlike a communally owned project. Again, this is not the fault of AGPL, it’s the status quo for a lot of open source; but the way AGPL’s copyleft extends things represents a change to what implications people are used to and widens the gap.
All that said, the emotions felt here are not always rational. Sometimes things feel unfair or undesirable just because they’re different. I am not trying to cast my personal beliefs when I speak about discontent with AGPL because the truth is, I don’t have any. (Certainly not with AGPL specifically.)
I think perspective matters. The way I view my place in the world impacts how I see it. I tend to believe in mostly permissive licensing, especially for personal work. I believe this maximizes the utility of the work and the likelihood that someone may benefit from it. I have accepted the fact that they may benefit in ways that I don’t like. I have also accepted that some may not follow even the most basic terms of the license or copyright law itself; it’s not a huge deal. That’s not to say I would literally never pursue someone for violating my “IP” rights, though it is certainly a statement that for the most part, I don’t really intend to. If someone got maddeningly rich off of something I did for free, I lost nothing. Is it really much more unfair than writing a piece of code that is directly responsible for millions of dollars of profit, but only ever receiving an unremarkable salary? Clearly not. I got a dependable wage and did what I was paid to do. I didn’t have to do it. The entity could opt to show some appreciation by trying to reward employees for such things to encourage it and boost morale, but most people would agree that they’re not under any obligation to.
Not everyone feels this way. To some, they are invested in and concerned about the ways their code may be used. For some reason a growing set of expectations surround open source software in particular, perhaps simply because nobody gets paid to write it. This sometimes results in outbursts against overly entitled users who demand work out of open source authors. But the reverse situation gets far less attention: developers demanding that users follow additional unwritten rules. But I don’t think it’s rational. When Amazon announces an OpenJDK distribution, they’re the heroes. Why? Because fuck Oracle, that’s why. But when they announce forking ElasticSearch, they are panned for breaking open source. I know the “ASP problem” is real, hence AGPLs existence. However, there’s a difference from the pragmatic viewpoint (“we need to close this loophole to protect end user rights”) and the fairness viewpoint (“Big corps shouldn't take advantage of GPL code.” — would the same feeling be applied to a fellow startup?)
All this to say, I think if you want to understand the viewpoint of people who hate specific license decisions, you have to try to understand where they are coming from. It may not be totally rational, but it’s probably rooted in some defensible, understandable position. I think much distaste for AGPL over GPL is likely a little bit FUD and a little bit misunderstanding. But I do think people are coming around to AGPL. If anything, people’s awakened awareness of the fears of the “ASP provider” has done it some good. The reality is though, that people probably viewed it as being similar to what SSPL came to be; and SSPL, depending on where you are standing, could be a threat to open source (in a way that AGPL is not.)
One of the cool things about open source is that you can go and use Open Source code for things that the original author may have never even thought of. So your implementation of some novel algorithm might end up being useful in some situation that you were not aware of or maybe did not even exist when you wrote the code. While it seems idealistic, it is not that uncommon.
Now for the GPL license, depending on version, it is not a huge deal if you borrow GPL code. It is a fairly standard license that a lot of projects use. And of course GPL is compatible with a lot of different licenses, making it possible to distribute your projects under the terms of the GPL including code with compatible licensing.
Something interesting to note is that AGPLv1 is not GPL compatible. AGPLv3 is not GPLv2 compatible. GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are compatible, since GPLv3 was written to intentionally allow this usage. (Note: IANAL or an expert; so this should be taken with a grain of salt.)
In the end, this is why permissive licenses have gained a lot of popularity. It is immensely aggravating to people when things that are technically possible and not spiritually immoral are prevented by legal barriers that feel unnecessary. When the ZFS on Linux project faces trouble because of software licensing, it feels like a farce and a waste of time and resources.
Now imagine that the reasoning for the license choices being incompatible was not to protect user rights, and not simply a matter of differing policies between different organizations and their open source releases, but rather transparently a ploy to protect a profit model. This is where people's aggravation turns to anger, because it then feels like the open source label is being used to pull people in, then the more restrictive licenses are being used to seek rent forever after.
The reality is obviously not quite that grim. In fact, perhaps because of licenses like the Timescale license and SSPL, people have come around to AGPL in quite a significant way. The Overton window of open source licenses from corporate open source releases may have tilted a bit more towards the 'restrictive' side.
I don't think there's anything actually immoral about protecting one's own profit model. It does, at least in some sense, dilute what it means for software to be open source; if AGPL becomes popular, it will be more likely to encumber more projects with its requirements. Of course, in many cases, the ownership of the copyright will be spread among multiple parties, and so everyone is on a level playing field, and so other than the burden of ensuring you adhere to the restriction there's no real reason to feel that it is 'unfair' anymore than copyleft licenses already are.
At the end of the day, GPL was a legal solution to a community problem, and it imperfectly encodes an idea. There is no perfect encoding of that idea, so it is bound to cause some frustration for where the expectations mismatch with reality.