alt Hacker News> As far as I understand it, the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source
Isn't this what the AGPL is for? That's an OSI approved "open source" license that places restrictions on people making the software accessible as a network service.
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I thought so, too, at first. But there's a crucial difference: With the AGPL, Bear's competition can offer the software as as service if they publish the source code they are deploying. With the Bear license, Bear's competition just cannot offer the software as a service. It feels mostly in the spirit of FOSS to me, but Stallman would disagree. He has made it clear that there should be no restrictions on use.
AGPL doesn't really prevent Amazon from making it an AWS offering unless they want to modify the program and don't want to share the modifications.
Not a lawyer, but my understanding is there is a strong feeling that AGPL can be roughly ignored if a service provider provides some level of indirection (e.g. a proxy) between the user and the software. Then, the software is somehow not being accessed over a network and thus they are not required to release the source.
I think the problem that these folks have is that AGPL still allows other people to host the software.
They want to seem altruistic but want to also be the only provider.
GPL would have been a better initial license, and AGPL would have been the next logical step to ensure that changes that hosted services make can come back to the original version.
I'm not entirely sure what they were hoping to get by making an extremely permissive licensed piece of software, but competition doesn't appear to be it.