It's more that vendor neutral is a sweet spot for me. AGPL, as well as GPL for a library rather than something that works well as a standalone application, brings it closer into what feels to me like no software vendor territory - one where you find something else to sell (vend) other than software, like Stallman musing about choosing to be a waiter rather than have any non-free software:
> Well, the most simple alternative was to leave the software field, do something else. Now a lot of programmers say to me, 'the employers hiring programmers demand that I do this -- if I don't do this I will starve.' Now, that's silly. Anybody can leave the field of programming. Even in the US, there are millions of people who make a living not by writing software. I have no other special skills, nothing else that I'm particularly good at. But I'm sure I could have become a waiter. (Now, maybe I couldn't be a waiter at one of the fanciest restaurants.) There is nothing unethical about being a waiter. And there is one thing -- you are not going to starve.
I am still not sure what you are saying. Are you saying that Forgejo being GPL allows e.g. Codeberg to modify it without releasing their changes, and with AGPL they couldn't build a valid business model?
> with AGPL they couldn't build a valid business model
It's not so clear cut.
There are differences between the GPL and AGPL, and they can have an effect on how well a business or non-profit (which Codeberg is) that uses it or is based on it (which Codeberg is) functions.
Forgejo uses the GPL, which is meant for a balance between having it remain open source (a reason for Copyleft) and it being convenient (compared to the AGPL). When a code change is pushed to the servers of someone using Forgejo, they don't need to worry about releasing the changes - only when distributing it. It may take time to prepare the changes to be released publicly, or it may reveal details about a client who is using it.
Forgejo is vendor-neutral because Forgejo itself and their flagship user, Forgejo, use it under the same license as everyone else, and is pretty vendor-friendly because it's under the GPL rather than the AGPL.
Element isn't vendor-neutral because they don't use it under the same license as everyone else. They have the copyright and they don't have to abide by the AGPL. It isn't so vendor-friendly as an open source product to other vendors besides them because people outside have to use it under the AGPL, and might have a situation where a client needs something and the release is held up because the customizations are going to have to be made public as source code as soon as they're accessible over the network.
Both of these are products that are integration-heavy. The AGPL can be a lot more vendor-friendly for products that aren't so integration-heavy.
With the AGPL, you only have to share the code if you modified it. You don't have to keep on top of automatic updates and publish the source code for each update you get.
> Well, the most simple alternative was to leave the software field, do something else. Now a lot of programmers say to me, 'the employers hiring programmers demand that I do this -- if I don't do this I will starve.' Now, that's silly. Anybody can leave the field of programming. Even in the US, there are millions of people who make a living not by writing software. I have no other special skills, nothing else that I'm particularly good at. But I'm sure I could have become a waiter. (Now, maybe I couldn't be a waiter at one of the fanciest restaurants.) There is nothing unethical about being a waiter. And there is one thing -- you are not going to starve.
http://mikro-berlin.org/Events/OS/ref-texte/stallman.html