That doesn't seem required for the 4 freedoms listed. Could you elaborate which of those requires the providers to run your modifications on their system?
> The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish.
What part of that doesn't make sense? If the program is going to run on someone else's system then you'll need access to that system to be able to modify it to do your computing as you wish.
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.
