This is true in a technical sense. Restrictions on commercial use are incompatible with a very specific interpretation of what "free" means. I could also invent a definition of freedom that was contrived to be incompatible with copy-left licenses and then write a post about how those aren't "truly free" either.
I'm not terribly convinced this legalistic nitpicking is really the right discussion though. I think the real questions here are normative. If I want to share my code freely with hobbyists and individuals, while ensuring that Amazon can't just steal it, pervert it into something I hate, and then borrow my own reputation to help them sell it, is it morally bad to add a license that stops this behavior?
From a developer's perspective: Why should code be 100% Certified Free™ instead of 95%, or even 50%? Is it a moral imperative to make code truly free, or an aesthetic ideal? What harms come from a CC-BY-NC license relative to MIT and why do those harms matter? I think answers to these questions are much harder and more interesting to come by than splitting hairs over the semantics of freedom.
I'm not terribly convinced this legalistic nitpicking is really the right discussion though. I think the real questions here are normative. If I want to share my code freely with hobbyists and individuals, while ensuring that Amazon can't just steal it, pervert it into something I hate, and then borrow my own reputation to help them sell it, is it morally bad to add a license that stops this behavior?
From a developer's perspective: Why should code be 100% Certified Free™ instead of 95%, or even 50%? Is it a moral imperative to make code truly free, or an aesthetic ideal? What harms come from a CC-BY-NC license relative to MIT and why do those harms matter? I think answers to these questions are much harder and more interesting to come by than splitting hairs over the semantics of freedom.