If they use AGPL, how would they get companies to actually use the software before extorti^w shaming them into paying some money for a product they are licensed to use for free?
Developers: think long and hard about the license that's right for your project before you push out to the world. I can't help but feel that free/open source software has become a lot less altruistic in the era of Github. We gained quantity and quality, but lost something else that's difficult to express: innocence? Not every project needs to be a job/startup/foundation (cue Left-Pad LLC). I daresay, not all projects ought to be monetized, period.
no need to shame everyone, of course if the license is AGPL you won't be asking small users to get a license right away, but it gives you leverage with large companies to justify them doing business with you. I don't think a large company would want a core component to die just because it's no longer mantained, nor they want to dedicate the resources to mantain a fork.
I was being snarky - MIT-/BSD-style licenses are licenses and they grant companies license to use your software, without having to "do business" with author (but companies can be publicly pressured to do so (see the fine article), once they start using said software). The snark is rooted on the fact that large companies avoid AGPL software like a leper - they won't even install it, let alone do business with the author. So anyone hoping to do a long-con is better off avoiding AGPL.
You can change your license, but it's not retroactive, the code released so far keeps the old license (and can be forked from there). Note that it would be unsustainable otherwise, e.g. release as free, force people to pay later
If the code is already fairly mature then the big companies using it can just fork it (and make their new fork entirely closed if they feel like it) and the creator of the original code won't be able to do a thing about it.
