How weird. Their position here seems to be that proprietary software running on Google's servers generating html is ok, but proprietary javascript embedded in those pages is not ok. (because it runs in your browser?)
“The GNU Affero General Public License is a modified version of the ordinary GNU GPL version 3. It has one added requirement: if you run the program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the program that it's running. If what's running there is your modified version of the program, the server's users must get the source code as you modified it.…” — http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html
presumably they dont want the back end of gmail being proprietary either but its not the point of the article?
Yea, exactly.