To “modify” a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an exact copy. The resulting work is called a “modified version” of the earlier work or a work “based on” the earlier work.
Since hosting it behind a proxy only requires making an exact copy, I don’t think that argument would work.
My point (which I intended to elaborate, but didn’t initially have time) is that hosting one of these modern software platforms involves a whole stack of components, any one of which could be modified to make apparently-noncompliant output without technically modifying any of the AGPL components. You could change the third-party templating library used by the Mastodon code, change the language runtime, even modify the OS itself.
Which means I mostly agree with your point: the AGPL is not strict enough to actually ensure what it wants to ensure, and I don’t think that it can ensure that without applying a whole bunch of other unacceptable restrictions.
There could be an argument that hosting it behind a proxy counts as modification.
They define modification in the license:
Since hosting it behind a proxy only requires making an exact copy, I don’t think that argument would work.
My point (which I intended to elaborate, but didn’t initially have time) is that hosting one of these modern software platforms involves a whole stack of components, any one of which could be modified to make apparently-noncompliant output without technically modifying any of the AGPL components. You could change the third-party templating library used by the Mastodon code, change the language runtime, even modify the OS itself.
Which means I mostly agree with your point: the AGPL is not strict enough to actually ensure what it wants to ensure, and I don’t think that it can ensure that without applying a whole bunch of other unacceptable restrictions.