Because they listen to fear mongering or would prefer to ask nicely that megacorps be kind to their users instead of just using a tool with legal teeth.

They have to wait for the AI scraper bots to steal it for them :(

Probably because the dependency scanner the lawyers at his company required be added to the code review system will instantly fail the review if he added an AGPL project as a dependency.

There’s no reason to worry about the AGPL unless you plan to conceal code from its users. Most software businesses take this approach because it’s hard to sell information that is publicly available, and code is just information. Some businesses make money operating software for others. AWS pays on-call engineers to keep RabbitMQ highly available.

Free Software protects the user from the developer. Permissive licenses protect the developer from the author.

A lot of professional software engineers get confused and think of themselves as the “user” when they’re actually more of a middle man.