I'm subject to a moratorium on AGPL software at work. Some legal departments forbid or highly restrict use of AGPL licenses. They are concerned the licenses' viral nature causing problems for their software products.
I'm sure it is - but that leaves the engineer with the calculation to do of "time this commercial tool will save me" versus "time/goodwill I will burn trying to get the purchase approved".
There are plenty of ways to reduce friction. In this case, mold could have offered a 30 day commercial license to the company to demo the linker and see if the ROI was worth it.
Not that I agree with them, but, also, IANAL.