With a copyright assignment, the authors could take the entire project closed-source for future versions. You'd still be able to use older, AGPL-licensed versions, but perhaps not newer versions.

For programs like this, I see little benefit of AGPL over GPL, since the main use-case will be in-house deployments. I can't see how anyone would deploy something like this on the backend, where if you made an in house-fork with bug fixes to support your proprietary infrastructure, you'd have to publish the patches for the wider community. It seems like a big red flag to me.

If you have a contributor assignment, the assignee can choose to release the changes under a proprietary license.

> If you have a contributor assignment, the assignee can choose to release the changes under a proprietary license.

Exactly! Hence my request for clarification (see above).

If more explanation is necessary: What davexunit is saying is that he wants his contributions to remain free. The AGPLv3 ensures that, even with copyright assignment. But what I guess davexunit really means is that he wants to be sure that all contributors, present and future, are locked into the AGPLv3 forever. I'm not saying the latter is wrong, I'm just saying you should call a spade a spade.

It doesn't ensure they remain free - a copyright assignment allows the contributions to be used as part of a proprietary release.

It's not our intention though, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8527999

If you are assigning them copyright, and they can sell proprietary licensed versions, then it's a pretty valid request...