This was my understanding --- actually I designed the licensing structure of this project around the assumption that companies would not want to use GPL licensed code commercially. I offer an AGPL license, and offer a commercial license for a fixed fee.

My understanding is that if you link to the library, your code must also be GPL, which means that anyone linking to your code must be GPL, etc.

This is a problem if you're trying to sell your code. Probably you don't want to make it GPL, and you probably don't want to force your customers to make their code GPL.

> This is a problem if you're trying to sell your code.

I think relatively few tech companies are trying to sell their code directly these days. Most are hoping to build a product and/or service and then charge customers for access to it.

An API or a web service counts as distribution under the AGPL. If you run such a service, and you use spaCy --- either by linking the binary, or using it as a network service --- you'll have to AGPL your code. Which introduces equivalent restrictions on anyone who uses your service.

Because GPL is hard to work with. I want to write code, not dig through legalese or discuss with a lawyer whether it's okay for me to do X or Y. More often the easier option is either to completely isolate GPL'ed bits (i.e. run GPL software on a separate machine so that there's no possible interpretation under which we're modifying it), or use something with a different license.

Or are you saying companies should be more willing to GPL their products? That's unlikely to happen.