You ask a very good question. I'm afraid the very strong rules about confidentiality that apply to me as a California attorney prevent me from answering as I'd

You ask a very good question. I'm afraid the very strong rules about confidentiality that apply to me as a California attorney prevent me from answering as I'd like. I can say that I think your experience is typical of large software firms. Most still ban AGPLv3, if not all GPLs or all copyleft licenses, by policy. Even when there are exploitable loopholes, they're typically narrow enough to require very close collaboration between legal and engineering, in the context of a very specific project, especially the first time. It's possible to exploit those loopholes, but not possible to prescribe how to do so by general policy. That used to be true of private changes to GPLv2 and GPLv3 code. We've seen exercises of those intentional gaps in copyleft operationalized as policy in firms that rely on them daily. If you see posts on https://writing.kemitchell.com https://writing.kemitchell.com that you like, you may also find https://blog.licensezero.com https://blog.licensezero.com worth the candle.