> I can keep using a permissively licensed software or a fork of it at the moment they pull the rug and keep using it in the same manner; I just don't get future updates. I cannot fork AGPL and use it commercially in any reasonable manner.

You can fork it and use it in and as free software forever. This is only 'unreasonable' if you're a proprietary software vendor. The complaint of a proprietary software vendor strikes me as somewhat ironic here: what, the same deal that you give to your own customers for your own product is one you simply 'can't' take yourself because it's not 'reasonable'?

> If you are a sufficiently large commercial entity, you are probably wise to act as if it is proprietary.

But right about this. In the scenario you describe, you're a customer under the proprietary license— the kind of dependency your proprietary software product has on the software is the same kind it might have on any other proprietary software. The AGPLv3 version is not a backup option for you.

And it's true that the dual-licensing game the original vendor has set up is one that only they will ever be allowed to play.

If my company were considering purchased dual-licensed AGPLv3 software, I'd give advice like the following:

> It's great for the wider public that there is an open-source version of this exact same software our there. But what we're considering buying here is not that— what we're considering buying is proprietary software. For us, all that the availability of that open-source license means is that this is proprietary software whose source code would be easy for us to inspect, and that upstream might even accept our patches for issues that we encounter. I think both of those things are huge advantages! But if this vendor gets bought out or shuttered, we could potentially be left in the lurch much as we would if the software were exclusively proprietary. That's often an acceptable risk, in my opinion, and it's certainly one that our company has deemed acceptable with many past and present proprietary software purchases. But we should note that on the assessment: if we buy this, we're not buying or depending on open-source software; we're buying and depending on proprietary software.

All that assuming, of course, that the proposition is to use the AGPLv3 software in a user-facing, proprierary web service under the assumption that the copyleft component of the AGPL extends to that web service. If we were evaluating it for use in an internal service, where the end users are our own employees, or an external-facing service that we'd be comfortable releasing under the GPL, or we think that the way we want to use it would not require any license changes for us even if we take thw AGPLv3 version, I'd instead say something like

> Ask the lawyers as always, but I don't foresee any problems. I think this is great and I'd love to use it. If our legal people aren't used to considering copyleft licenses, can we have them consult with the FSF or the SFC or the EFF or something before they make a decision about this? Is that a thing?

Anyway, I agree with you about how being the customer (under the proprietary license) of a company like this is different from being the customer (for support services only) of a company who publishes permissively-licensed free software. I don't agree, though, that the dual-licensing thing is a trick! I think it's totally possible for everyone to go into that kind of arrangement eyes open and be happy with it. I hope and expect that's the goal for companies like that of TFA.