Abuse isn't a legal concept here. It's condemnation of specific business conduct, specifically a kind of free riding. That's for businessfolk to debate. Lawy

Abuse isn't a legal concept here. It's condemnation of specific business conduct, specifically a kind of free riding. That's for businessfolk to debate. Lawyers read the licenses, but business managers decide how to use them, to what ends, and why. The cloud competitors MongoDB professes concern about have sophisticated software license counsel. They're very good at reading licenses. That is part of the claimed problem: They were good enough to see and exploit loopholes in a dense, oddly drafted license like AGPLv3, which most others read as "free for free software only", rather than as written. They also have deep pockets, US legal nexus, and significant ongoing commercial use to enjoin. The latter make a wide target. But the former makes them too strong to sue on anything but firm ground. I don't know what you mean by normal actors, but if there are a lot of them, and they're relatively small, and also potential Mongo customers, suing them en mass to make examples, RIAA/MPAA-style, isn't nearly as appealing as cutting big cloud providers offering MongoDB off from updates with a license change. Everything about these changes and the materials accompanying points to the latter. I don't see Mongo announcing any litigation campaign for going beyond AGPLv3 permission. I do see Mongo drawing a new line in the sand, via a new license for new releases, that will be easier to defend against the specific competitors they see pushing the limits of the old line.