> You have all the exact code, but running it yourself has no meaning because users and all their data will not migrate to your installation. Free software lic

> You have all the exact code, but running it yourself has no meaning because users and all their data will not migrate to your installation. Free software licenses are mostly about your rights. You can host your own instance with your data. Stallman said on many occasions that it is not possible to exercise software freedom using a service hosted by someone else -- there is a fundamental clash between the freedoms of the users and the freedoms of the administrators. Both groups should be able to exercise their freedom, but unless the users are all administrators (of their own instances) there will always be a mismatch. > Hundreds of millions of them continue to use the services, forcing you to do the same. This is a fair point when it comes to social networks, because the AGPL doesn't require interoperability or the ability to federate (such terms would make little sense in a copyright license meant to be applied to all sorts of works). The real-world example would be the "fediverse" -- you could imagine a circumstance where all fediverse servers decide to block instances that don't implement $BadFeature. I would argue that in that nightmare scenario there really isn't a great solution even in theory. If you require interoperability, you've restricted the software freedoms of the other operators and now people can no longer block bad actors. But I would argue the AGPL does make the situation marginally better -- at least you could run your own (isolated) fediverse.