It's a great question, and there's no one definitive answer. Some context: I've been an open source developer for all my life, my previous business was also open source, and I spoke with a lot of people over the last year about the right license for us.
The main choices are: copyleft like AGPL (you want AGPL, not GPL for server applications), permissive like MIT (which we chose[0]), or so called "fair-code" which are the not-quite-open-source variants like the SSPL.
While AGPL and SSPL are "better for business", MIT is more aligned with our mission, and is better for fostering a community. You can read more about the thinking on our Show HN[1].
Either way though, all of what the stricter licenses do is make it harder for competitors to use your code in their own service. Which is important, but not the end of the world as competitors can always just copy your API, landing page, and everything else.
It's a great question, and there's no one definitive answer. Some context: I've been an open source developer for all my life, my previous business was also open source, and I spoke with a lot of people over the last year about the right license for us.
The main choices are: copyleft like AGPL (you want AGPL, not GPL for server applications), permissive like MIT (which we chose[0]), or so called "fair-code" which are the not-quite-open-source variants like the SSPL.
While AGPL and SSPL are "better for business", MIT is more aligned with our mission, and is better for fostering a community. You can read more about the thinking on our Show HN[1].
Either way though, all of what the stricter licenses do is make it harder for competitors to use your code in their own service. Which is important, but not the end of the world as competitors can always just copy your API, landing page, and everything else.
[0] https://github.com/svix/svix-webhooks
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30347858