> 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".