Listen, at the end of the day, it's their legal right to choose the licensing strategy that they think is right for their business, shareholders, employees, customers, peace of mind, etc. I feel like asking if it's hypocritical is a bit of a straw man, though. It's not hypocritical per se - I just feel that it's a bit disingenuous to say "hey, we have this large, successful business to protect" without also openly acknowledging that it may never have existed without the tailwinds of an era where the open source community embraced permissive licenses. Simply dismissing the question as "hypothetical" is what I take issue with.

Also, I see your shiny, new account and feel it's likely that you are really just here to defend Grafana. I get it. I don't think this change is a bad idea, necessarily. I just want some of these licensing shenanigans to be more brutally honest.

Would the same level of community have formed around Grafana?

Would it have received as many contributions and support for new backends?

Would Raj have wanted to acquire Torkel + Grafana for the original Raintank company if it were an AGPL project?

Would they have been able to as successfully build and monetize a Grafana Enterprise product with the requirements of AGPL in place?

It seems naive to argue that none of those would have been impacted by a more restrictive license.