When I see the abbreviation "BSL", I can't help but think it stands for "bullshit license"....
However, it actually sounds like a great idea to me, and a great way for companies to make money licensing software to commercial users while still keeping it free and open source for individuals, while providing a safety mechanism in case the company goes belly-up.
There is nothing the individuals can do with the open source version. It's old and has bugs and maybe security issues.
In theory they could look at the source of the "commercial" version, but then have to be careful - they can't change it and if they ever write code they have to be careful about not doing plagiarism.
If you want to redistribute, then you need to use the old buggy version. I don't really see a problem here.
If you want to use the latest-and-greatest in a non-commercial capacity, you can do just that. And it's open-source, so you can modify it all you want and use it. You just can't distribute it.
What's the problem?
No, it's not as Free as GPLed software, nor is it meant to be. It's meant to allow a company to make a profit on software licensed to other businesses or for commercial use, while still allowing it to be open-source, and allowing private individuals to use it without paying a license fee. (At least, that's how I read it from the article.) It sounds like a great way to balance the competing interests of a commercial software company, the users (both non-commercial and commercial), and the community at large. It would be a terrible license for basic infrastructure software like OpenSSH or PostgreSQL, but for business-oriented application software, it sounds absolutely perfect.
(Note, again, what I've written above about the way the BSL works is what I've gleaned from reading the article; if I'm incorrect, someone please feel free to correct me.)
However, it actually sounds like a great idea to me, and a great way for companies to make money licensing software to commercial users while still keeping it free and open source for individuals, while providing a safety mechanism in case the company goes belly-up.