I enforced the AGPL on my code
&gt; I license all my personall stuff under the GPL and AGPL (where applicable) and dislike the permissive licenses (MIT, 3 clause BSD, X11, Apache) because they allow people to take your stuff and never contribute back. I prefer strong copyleft licenses that force you to contribute. Here is a good article going into permissive vs copyleft licensing.<p>This is a fair point, however the way it seems to end up working is that people just don&#x27;t use the software due to the viral nature of GPL and AGPL.<p>I&#x27;d be happy enough to contribute modifications back to projects under GPL and AGPL but, the reality is, if I embed some GPL or AGPL component, service, or product into my site or service we&#x27;re now in this (at best) legal grey area where we have to figure out how much of what I&#x27;ve done is a modification, and how much is distinct, and there&#x27;s a risk I just have to hand it all over (whch I don&#x27;t want to do).<p>It quickly becomes enough of a nightmare to deal with that it&#x27;s easier to either (a) find an alternative that uses a permissive license, or (b) build something oneself that offers the required functionality.<p>It&#x27;s a shame because it leads to, I think, both OSS and corporations losing out. It would be great if there was some sort of middle ground license that protected against corporate abuse, and forced corporations to hand over changes without the risk of having to hand over large tranches of their other IP. I&#x27;m not sure what that would be though, or whether it could be made to work.