This is a confusing claim. Are you saying the chosen license (<https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/blob/998e87263248...>) makes the software free to use to offer (e.g. gratis) "hosted or managed service[s]" so long as one does not sell the services? This is trivially confirmed not to be true. It prohibits all use of the software to provide services, not just a prohibition on selling them.

Except AWS is not an IP vampire in this case, they are providing a hosting service. There is no conflict between AWS's use and the spirit of the open source license.

The conflict is entirely between the original developer wanting to be the sole service provider and the open source license that lets people host the software themselves. The software as a service business model is the problem here, not AWS hosting.

The license disallows use of the software for what it is intended: setting up a multi-user blogging system.

Not for practically every purpose. It's a blog platform to be used by services that provide blog hosting, just like his own business does, so any use of it would be directly competing with him. From TFA, he never wanted people to actually use it, just to look at the source code.

It’s saying that you can use Bear for your own blog, but you can’t launch a service that hosts other people’s blogs using it.

This can't possibly be true, since the Linux kernel's code is GPL and approximately every tech company uses Linux.

Note that this is about source code, not binaries, or nobody would be working with docker (and more.)

Of course a company must forbid copy/paste of GPL code, because that would GPL the codebase and that's hardly what they want. But one should ask the Legal office (and/or other offices) about adding any MIT, BSD or proprietary library: credit must be given (how?), licenses must be available and compatible with the way the software is distributed. There are so many licenses out there, everything should be vetted.

I'm self-employed in Germany, and when I was employed, what was in the contract went more in the other direction: it was explicitly allowed to contribute to FOSS projects. Of course, it still would not have been OK to randomly add GPL software to a closed source customer project. If anyone had been stupid (uneducated, really) enough, somebody else on the same project would have noticed.

I was at a FANG until 2022, and we were allowed to introduce GPL code into the monorepo. There were policies on how to do it correctly, but definitely not prohibited.

(AGPL, however, was nearly impossible to get permission to use)

Companies not wanting GPL code in code bases they want to keep proprietary should not be surprising to anyone. I fail to see how that is relevant to the comment you are replying though.

Some companies subscribe to FUD (aka lawyers covering their ass) and forbid use of AGPL, GPL and sometimes even LGPL software outright even though they allow proprietary sofware that has even more restrictions, but the big elephant in the room that is usually cited for these open source to "proprietary but we still want the publicity of open source" license changes (AWS) is not one of those companies that put fear over profit.

Why am I silently downvoted?

You'd want to stop them if like in TFA you don't actually want to provide open source software but rather want to sell your software as a service with free marketing from being "open source".

I have a strong feeling you would be told "we don't know, it's never been tested in court, there's a chance you would win and a chance you would lose on that argument".

My understanding of the theory that they're advocating is that the AGPL requires that when you modify AGPL software you modify it to provide an offer of its source.

And that you can comply with that completely, run the software, and then have a proxy in front that strips that offer without violating the letter of the license.

And if that theory works I think "substantial features" of the code could be directly (but for the indirection of that proxy) exposed.