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Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

blog.joinmastodon.org

71–80 of 551 posts

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#71

This (possible but technically not yet a) license violation has gotten more press for OSS licenses and enforcement than anything before, I think. Certainly more press than the Vizio thing, which will actually impact a lot more people if anything comes of it.

Vizio?

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#72
post #56

Truth social is, as far as I'm aware, not launched. Thus I'm curious whether the AGPL "if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there" has really been triggered. Edit: This was based on the https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html explanation of the AGPL but the quote is not present in the license itself.

They didn’t ‘officially launch’ but the platform was up and running. There isn’t a ‘you don’t need to comply if it’s an alpha test’ clause in the AGPL.

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#73
post #62

Antithetical to your values why, because it’s supposedly going to be a free speech website (I’ll believe it when I see it), as opposed to the tightly moderated fediverse instances? Or is it just the guy? Or something else? Anyway, it hasn’t launched yet, so why can’t this post wait until then?

> why can’t this post wait until then?

The group announcing signing a merger agreement with a now-two-billion-dollar SPAC [1] is the likely spark. It's an announcement of a change in economic magnitude. That can make previously-ignorable mistakes meaningful to pursue.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/21/trump-linked-spac-shares-soa...

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#74
post #64

"On Oct 26, we sent a formal letter to Truth Social’s chief legal officer, requesting the source code to be made publicly available in compliance with the license. According to AGPLv3, after being notified by the copyright holder, Truth Social has 30 days to comply or the license may be permanently revoked."

Wouldn't a semi-malicious actor be mostly in the clear if they provided the upstream code and a statement declaring they make no modifications to the provided source directly? If so, what would the recourse be? I can't imagine a court backing a demand to reveal 's production systems based on what little external evidence one would have in these circumstances.

> Wouldn't a semi-malicious actor be mostly in the clear if they provided the upstream code and a statement declaring they make no modifications to the provided source directly?

Sure, but that seems to be belied on its face by them having actually stripped the present-by-default mentions & links:

> neither the terms nor any other part of the website contained any references to Mastodon, nor any links to the source code, which are present in Mastodon’s user interface by default.

That, then, would be extremely strong evidence that they're lying, and I would expect more than enough for a legal injunction.

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#76
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the person who was the sitting president of the united states, who got deplatformed in unison by big tech social media, and is now fighting against censorship by using tech? Yeah, that is not relevant at all to hackernews /s

No, we mean the fat orange KGB troll by the same name.

Please, trump has defects enough so we don't have to resort to this stupid Russian conspiracy lie.

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#78

Are the quoted terms actually incorrect or in violation of the license? >all source code ... are owned or controlled by us or licensed to us, and are protected by copyright and trademark laws That's correct isn't it? The mastodon code would be licensed to them under the AGPL. So I am not sure this should be a source of "worry" in and of itself. The potential issue appears to be that they have modified the mastodon co…

I'm not sure it's correct, since they're reusing mastodon they should be clearly indicating that parts or all of the work is licensed under AGPLv3. And the claims you quote seem at best weasely if the entire thing is derivative of mastodon (and thus not in any way owned by truth social). Per my reading of the AGPLv3 (though IANAL), section 5 seems to be rather thoroughly violated: 5. Conveying Modified Source Version…

I agree that - on its face at least - the platform is probably in violation.

My point was just that I don't think the TS terms that Mastodon quotes in its blog post are incorrect.

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#80
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the json "don't use this for evil" license.

Wow! I had no idea. That is actually hilarious and many parties have even used that to reject it's inclusion as Free Software https://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/jsonevil I was hoping for something more enforceable than that, but still interesting enough. Looks like half of all companies using JSON are in trouble (obviously it's subjective, don't think that needs to be said).

It's not the JSON format, but rather certain libraries which process JSON (I should have been more precise). Many companies avoid using those libraries for that very reason.
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