> many of the people who want to make code available with a permissive license don't have an option that is common and well understood and that protects them.
The AGPL is that option. It is a copyleft license that explicitly regulates the 'public performance' of software (putting conditions on public performance of a copyrighted work is a right of all copyright owners, there's nothing "exotic" involved here) in order to close the perceived 'service provider loophole' where software that's made available as part of an application services platform is not required to make its complete source code available, including even modifications that are purportedly asserted to be "for internal use".
Short answer:
1. AGPL doesn't actually solve this problem. This is why MongoDB just moved away from AGPL.
2. AGPL is quite restrictive for people who want to use the software in proprietary applications but don't want to open source their own code. This is a really large proportion of usage for us and we don't want to restrict people in that way.
Say that your SaaS product to share pictures of cats uses database X, which is AGPL licensed. Depending on how you read the license, your SaaS product could have to be licensed as AGPL. Or not.
That ambiguity is why many companies won't touch the AGPL with a mile long pole.
The AGPL is that option. It is a copyleft license that explicitly regulates the 'public performance' of software (putting conditions on public performance of a copyrighted work is a right of all copyright owners, there's nothing "exotic" involved here) in order to close the perceived 'service provider loophole' where software that's made available as part of an application services platform is not required to make its complete source code available, including even modifications that are purportedly asserted to be "for internal use".