I actually completely disagree with you on the toxicity issue, but WRT to rethinkDB I don't think you are wrong. AGPL + Apache drivers is unlikely to be a succ

I actually completely disagree with you on the toxicity issue, but WRT to rethinkDB I don't think you are wrong. AGPL + Apache drivers is unlikely to be a successful combination if you are going with opencore. If you want to use (A)GPL, I think that's fantastic, but I think you need to make a pure free software play. While I differ with you on the choice of pejorative descriptions, one really has to study projects like Ghostscript to see what the problem is with GPL and open core. The GPL is actually used to restrict freedom rather than promote it because the non-free side of the project is a free rider on the free side. What happens is that nobody contributes in such an unbalanced situation. As a business you have to maintain a product where many people are using it for free, but nobody is encouraged to hand you contributions for nothing. If you want to use (A)GPL in your product, you need a business plan that ensures freedom for your users, so that they are encouraged to join you. If you want open-core (as rethinkDB apparently does) then you need a license that levels the playing field so that other non-free-software entities are willing to collaborate with you. Non-permissive free software licenses effectively block those contributions and so you are left with a lose-lose situation. Of course, if you are motivated by software freedom, you really don't care about this... but then you wouldn't be doing open-core.