To be really strict: AGPL only mandates that contributions be shared with the user. The freedom of users is more important than the freedom of developers.
Of course an upstream maintainer can be a user and get the contributions.
For instance, grsecurity will sell you a security-hardening-patched Linux kernel. You, as the user/customer, have the right to take those GPL patches, and share them publicly. But if you do so, grsecurity will blacklist you as a customer, and you won't be able to get any more patches from them.
"Technically you could share the code, and then we'll blacklist you" isn't letting people share the code, "technically" their customers can do anything.
This sounds like the reasoning of a petulant elementary school kid, not a professional security company.
You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice [..] and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
This is section 1 of the GPLv2 [1]. This plainly states that if The Company is distributing their code under GPLv2, their customers are plainly permitted to "copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code".
Their whole business model is based on a tortuous reading of this part of section 2:
If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Their claim is that they are shipping their patch set as a separate work from the Linux kernel, so that they're not bound by the requirement that "the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License", and they're free to choose whatever license they want for their patch set. However, since their patch set is in no way a separate work on its own, only a lawyer could make that case without blinking.
This is misleading. All developers are users as well. Having to use closed source services and tools impacts us a lot.
Obviously. But you are using other FOSS directly or indirectly.
> The freedom of users is more important than the freedom of developers.
What exactly is this "freedom" that users are benefiting from? Is this the part where we invoke some negative right? That's called "control".