Not exactly. If you're not modifying your version you don't need to make the source available to server users. So if you contract out the modifications, and they only give the source to you, and you give the source to nobody...
I don't know if that scheme would work but I think "not battle tested enough" is valid.
Also there's some weirdness in how the availability requirement applies at the time of editing that gives me questions, but I'm far from an expert there.
I think a plain read of the license would make it clear that the "distribution" obligation occurs when you make it available on the network to your users (regardless of whether you modified it yourself or paid a contractor to do so), but I'm not a lawyer, so sometimes what looks like plain text to me can have a specific meaning that doesn't make sense to me.
Well the wording is "Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer[...]"
Starting with no trickery, there's a lot of circumstances where you could buy software from a vendor and confidently declare you didn't modify it. And that should be true even if you ask for certain features just for you. So there's probably a way to make the separation work.
I think that the contractor would be required to change the software to include a notice, and if you removed it you would be modifying the software again. I suspect a judge would not look kindly on such shenanigans in any case.
My view is that if Amazon or Apple lawyers thought they could bypass the AGPL that easily, they would've done it already (just look at the stuff NVIDIA does to pretend that it's not flagrantly violating the GPL).
You can't change the code to remove the notice, but you could let the link expire. Or the frontend server, while adding your own branding, might remove the notice the backend added.
> I suspect a judge would not look kindly on such shenanigans in any case.
I completely agree there, but they still need to find the license clause sufficiently correct and in scope if they want to throw the book at you.
I don't know if that scheme would work but I think "not battle tested enough" is valid.
Also there's some weirdness in how the availability requirement applies at the time of editing that gives me questions, but I'm far from an expert there.