Is GPL vs. MIT even relevant in this case? GPL only requires providing sources with the distributed binary, but for server-side code you don't distribute the binary so don't have to publish sources. The whole point behind the AGPL is to close this loophole.

Further I don't think the change to GPL even fixed the author's original concern of something like AWS taking it and standing up a service on it. The GPL wouldn't prevent that because again, no binary distribution.

I don't doubt that the author was told this by Sid at OCV, but it seems like a misunderstanding on both their parts of what the licenses actually require and don't require.