No, it means if you run Lemmy as a service and make modifications to it, you have to release your modifications back with the same license. Otherwise you couldn’t use a browser that’s not AGPL and read pages running on top of an AGPL server.
What AGPL is really good at is how nobody can take Lemmy, run a proprietary service and add incompatible features without giving them back to the community. So nobody can fork Lemmy, create a new VC-backed Reddit clone and start making incompatible changes to the source without the main project getting the source code.
Unfortunately it’s still possible to rewrite a VC-backed clone and start making incompatible changes. Think about Facebook’s “threads.net”. They sure did not take Lemmy source code.
You just have to be very careful to not have your developers to get even close to the AGPL source code, because if it’s similar, there’s a possibility the judge says you copied the AGPL code and now your license is AGPL too. There’s a reason companies are really scared about everything related to the license…
But yes, this happens and you have to have resources to fight it. Which is not easy.
Sadly, the more realistic option is that the judge dismisses the complaint because they don’t understand open source.
Happens sadly quite often.
Or it never encounters a judge because the author of the open source project doesn’t have the money to fight a megacorp in a court.
