It feels like your actual beef here is with CLAs, which often are designed to allow the current maintainers to relicense.
replyCLAs are not an attribute of the GPL. They're an agreement that can be applied to contributions to any codebase with any license.
Mongo was already a centralized project. Technically open source agpl but I don’t remember it having a large developer community or really many contributions from outside mongo. When the rug pull happened I think simply most people didn’t care or moved on to equal (or better) alternatives. It’s not beloved software like Redis is.
replyThe BSD license made forking Valkey easier because it ensures that everyone has equal footing
replyequal footing on the license is what allowed AWS to crush the original creators of the products they host.
it's a trade off.
the AGPL does not prevent a hosting service. it only prevents creating non-free addons. i see no problem with that. see also my other comment