I think users applies to end-users here. So you must not run the software as a service (either paid or for free) for other users. You are free to use it yourself.

Crucially, I think what is banned to offer accounts. Offering turnkey-hosting is probably banned in spirit, but the person offering the turnkey-hosting is not in violation, rather the person booking the turnkey hosting and offering the accounts on the instance to third parties is in violation.

I think the wording is originally against somebody like Amazon hosting e.g. database instances for other people to use, and then giving you an account in that database. It's still OK to rent a VM from them and use the package manager to install it.

In any way, it is really confusing, in a way a license should not be. And I don't really understand why someone builds a blog platform, which is not monetized, open sources it, but doesn't want other people to host it. If I open source my stuff, I want people to use it. If I want to share the code but don't want people to use it I'd just put it somewhere it with no license at all (all rights reserved).

> You are free to use it yourself.

Idk. That's not how I'm reading it. Someone reading my blog is a user of the blog software. So running the blog and letting people read it would fall under that limitation and therefore would be prohibited.

I understand that's probably not what they tried to write, but wouldn't want to defend that understanding in a courtroom.

> It's still OK to rent a VM from them and use the package manager to install it.

Do you open up port 80 to the world? Because then you are hosting the service that offers users access to substantial features or functionality.

> In any way, it is really confusing, in a way a license should not be.

On that we agree.