Whatever scenario you imagine where some $bigtech benefits from using the software, there is some identifiable chain of events from where the software was produced, which can, with some effort, be defined and specified in a general way in the license, in terms of a contract that allows each party in the chain to supply to the next party in the chain.
From that perspective they will never be an independent third party, and therefore you can specify that in a contract. So I don't see a theoretical problem to this, just a practical one of specifying this both precisely enough to be enforceable, and general enough to cover all real cases.
Is there a way to structure a license so that this kind of accounting is much harder?
In Hollywood’s case, it’s pretty clear when movies are making money (same with games to a large degree), but I don’t know if there’s a way for “tool” companies to leverage that.
Yes, game projects absolutely use Hollywood accounting. Dev studios pop up for one project, and often close at launch, and some other legal entity gets all the subs after that. And so on. Game dev financing is infamously horrid.
Unreal, though, is in a different negotiating position with the game publishers than, say, an open-source software with a new pay-us-if-you-make-money clause. Its the distinction between source-available (like Unreal Engine) and open-source which the article tries to make?
Timescale's new license is an interesting move in this direction.
This would just lead to Hollywood-accounting, where a AWS-Tools subsidiary does all the software at a loss, and AWS-Cloud is just a user etc.