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> it wasn't worth the hassle
Did the authors say that? According to their changelog [1] they stated "we've been attempting to monetize our product...this approach didn't meet our expectations...we don't want to persist with a strategy that didn't work well" which I infer to mean they didn't sell enough licenses.
Even if selling licenses is a hassle, then that indicates a problem with the open source ecosystem as GitHub and other code hosting websites should offer monetization tools for selling closed-source licenses directly from their web interface. I'm talking legal forms, templates, payment processors, and product tracking. Selling licenses should be easy, not a hassle.
[1] https://github.com/rui314/mold/releases/tag/v2.0.0
I'm curious about the license change? This is an executable is it not? Invoking it as a separate process does not require you make the software calling it GPL so switching to MIT should have no affect in the common case.
If the authors really wanted a more permissive license, then instead of relicensing from AGPL to MIT they should have gone AGPL with linking exception. An example of a project that does this is libgit2 [1]. This licensing is more permissive but still permits the author to sell commercial licenses to those making closed-source code changes.
[1] https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2#license