What existing sane license would be free comparably to GPL2 level for "normal users", while also preventing the case of Amazon and MongoDB?
Any discussion around what a license trying to solve that problem should look like needs to start by accepting that fact, and going from there. Either we change the Free Software Definition, or we accept that such licenses can't be Free Software licenses. There's no magical solution that satisfies both. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
You can try and use terminology like “EULAs” to liken them to big corporations that restrict usage, but so long as it’s an instance of “the little guy” restricting usage on the part of “the big guy”, I have a feeling those criticisms might not stick.
I’m not saying they’re right necessarily, just that falling back on definitions like the FSD in arguments presupposes that the people you’re talking to know what the FSD is, care about it and share your belief system.
What I oppose is what the FSF does, which is mislead people into thinking this is achievable within Free Software without making deep fundamental changes to what Free Software means. And I especially oppose the AGPL for its utter brokenness and unsuitability for almost any purpose.
> You can try and use terminology like “EULAs” to liken them to big corporations that restrict usage
That's correct terminology though. I'm not trying to use scary words to be scary. That's literally what EULAs do. If it sounds scary it's because it is a deep change to how a license behaves and people need to be aware of that.
If you want to release your software under an EULA that prohibits SaaSification, I have absolutely nothing against you - more power to you! It's your software. I have nothing against proprietary software either, I use it every day (though I prefer free software where possible, for a multitude of reasons).
Just don't try to hide the fact that that choice of license makes it non-free.
In fact, I'm a lot more reluctant to use AGPLed software than lots of proprietary software, because the AGPL is worse in that it pretends to be a free software license, giving you the code, and then sets up a landmine for anyone who actually makes a change to step on, and it has been marketed in a way that confuses everyone involved. As I mentioned in the reply to my analysis comment, I already accidentally violated the AGPL once because I ran a script that unknowingly patched some AGPL code without following the terms. If the code hadn't been there to begin with, or the AGPL had been correctly recognized as non-free and thus not amenable to such patching, that wouldn't have happened.
>“Free software” does not mean “noncommercial.” On the contrary, a free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. This policy is of fundamental importance—without this, free software could not achieve its aims.
I also do not understand why "you need to share the source when you expose" is apparently so much worse than "you need to share the source when you distribute".
Because distribution is an act controlled by copyright, while usage (which includes exposing) is not. That Free Software licenses are pure copyright licenses is a fundamental tenet of Free Software (which follows from Freedom Zero). We call licenses that restrict usage EULAs. You know, like the Windows license.
Thankfully, the AGPL isn't actually an EULA. In turn, it doesn't effectively accomplish its goal of avoiding SaaSification. Instead, it tries to work around this fundamental issue by imposing restrictions on how you can modify the code instead, therefore making it not Free Software, since such restrictions violate Freedom 1 of the Free Software Definition. Kind of like some of those weird nonfree "shared source" licenses.
If you're free to exercise software freedoms, there is nothing whatsoever stopping that case. As marcan points out above, stopping this is fundamentally incompatible with software freedoms.
I have been pointing out this inconvenient truth for months, and I am glad to see someone else with this same conclusion because the flaming I received in response to this logical conclusion (which does not seem to have any subjective component) from free software people was making me wonder if I had gone crazy.