I’ve considered that if Torvalds changes the license to AGPLv3, meaning servers have to publish their source code, it would an extremely quick collapse and abandonment of Linux.
AGPL evolved out of people saying, “my SaaS application isn’t being distributed at all, it’s just living on my server, so I can use your copy-left software without releasing my source alterations, and not violate the (GPLv2) license, because the license is based on distribution”. If the Linux kernel itself went AGPL (which isn’t what AGPL is even for), it would mean that modifications of the kernel would have to be published by whoever is doing the modifications, even if that kernel was only being used in a SaaS capacity, but most companies aren’t modifying the kernel and then offering that modified software over the network, they’re just running software on top of the upstream kernel, and AGPL higher up in the chain doesn’t touch that software, just like the current Linux kernel GPL doesn’t automatically apply to some python code you run on your Linux server.
Android, Amazon Linux, and IOS (the Cisco one) would just not move to the AGPL kernel (since you can’t retroactively apply it to already-released kernels), and probably continue their own forks as totally separate as they already do.
But the 99% of companies who are just using stock Linux distros e.g. stock Ubuntu to run their SaaS applications wouldn’t be affected. It definitely would not see the use collapse overnight.
Damn, that sounds so nice.