You can change it and run it as you wish on your hardware. There is no limitation on that. You are not required to run it on the host of someone else. If you b

You can change it and run it as you wish on your hardware. There is no limitation on that. You are not required to run it on the host of someone else. If you borrow my linux notebook for an hour and I don't give you access to chaning the software on it, doesn't change that linux is free software. In the same way that free software distributers are not required to distribute your desired patches. They perform a service of distribution (or cloud providers: running the software) But I think I get that you consider cloud services non-free outside of the pure software aspect. I think, though, that there's still meaningful distinction between providers running direct free software which you could essentially clone completely and run your own version and such that run closed versions, which do not allow that.