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Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

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

#201

Post by smhenderson »

usui wrote: post #46
jrootabega wrote: post #30

> As far as personal feelings are concerned, of course we would prefer if people so antithetical to our values did not use and benefit from our labour And sensible people would prefer that license violations would be published and pursued fairly, and personal feelings kept personal, rather than creating a soft list of people and perspectives whose online/computing freedom is less important than others.

Is there an example of a software with a license with more overt political views being directly stated in the agreement ? I'm NOT saying that it's wrong to have personal views, or to make a statement about what Mastodon feels about Trump's Truth Social, but I am curious if there is software in wide-use with something like "No anti-vaxxers". So far the most ideology-enforcing licenses I know are mainly about the battl…

Back in 2004 Fyodor, creator of nmap, terminated SCO's rights to use it based on their suit against IBM and general attacks on the Linux community. A very specific example, but one that immediately came to mind when reading your comment.

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/fyodor-terminates-sco-righ...

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

#202

Post by ToddWBurgess »

veltas wrote: post #159
roenxi wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all software was licensed that way, 5-15 years would pass then suddenly there'd be a whole bunch of "Wow, Stallman was right again! We should have been using free software licenses!" style articles. Restricting software use to only people approved by the creators is a terrible idea. Society has to operate with some level of trust that even people we disagree with, using methods we don't approve of, have the potent…

Not just Stallman, it's incompatible with the OSI definition of open source.

Depends where you live. In Canada and a lot of other parts of the world intellectual property also has something called moral rights. What is being done here is well within the copyright holder's moral rights in many parts of the world. If your name is associated with a project you have the right to assert how your project is used because it could reflect on the copyright holder's name and reputation.

Like all things intellectual property rights, the copyright's moral rights would have to be determined by a court of law in the copyright holder's legal jurisdiction.

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

#203

Post by dmos62 »

jlangenauer wrote: post #152
roenxi wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all software was licensed that way, 5-15 years would pass then suddenly there'd be a whole bunch of "Wow, Stallman was right again! We should have been using free software licenses!" style articles. Restricting software use to only people approved by the creators is a terrible idea. Society has to operate with some level of trust that even people we disagree with, using methods we don't approve of, have the potent…

Why? The creators created the software, they can put any conditions they please on how others might use it. They're under no moral or legal obligation to allow people to use the fruits of their labors, except as they permit.

The creators are themselves fruit of the society. It's short-sighted to grant them the privilege to withhold their fruit.

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

#204

Post by tialaramex »

ADifferentKyle wrote: post #107
poizan42 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this question was decided by SCOTUS in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc.: In a 6-3 ruling, Justice Ginsburg declared that laches cannot be invoked as a bar to pursuing a claim for damages brought within §507(b)'s three-year window. However, in extraordinary circumstances, laches may curtail the relief equitably awarded at the very outset of litigation,

Would the latches doctrine really apply to separate enforcement cases though? My understanding is that doctrine would prevent me from enforcing my rights against a particular actor if I wait too long to enforce those rights… but waiting too long against one actor wouldn’t be relevant if I seek to enforce those rights against a separate actor in a separate case.

You have the correct instinct. Laches (not latches, it really is a different word) is about a specific cause so it only helps if you've got a reasonable case that the plaintiff should have noticed this cause ages ago. If the cause is new that's obviously not going to work.

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

#205

Post by ncallaway »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #120
masklinn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 co…

They might be running a forwarding proxy with substitution rules. I don't think AGPL would have a problem with that, even though SSPL would. (Though, let's face it: they totally modified the source code.)

Yea, but you don’t have to prove your case to get into court.

You have to be able to say, with a straight face, that you really believe that they did the thing you’re accusing them of.

So just because it’s theoretically possible that there’s a path to the facts we see without violating the license, the fact that a license violation is a plausible explanation is enough to launch a court case.

After all, the court case including the discovery process and the trial itself are all about determining the relevant facts.

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

#206

Post by maeln »

woodpanel wrote: post #176

"but the reality of working on free software is that you give up the possibility of choosing who can and cannot use it from the get-go" I always wonder why wokeism hasn't reached software licenses yet? Just imagine the anger when it would come to a FOSS dev team's attention that is using their product, successfully even... "of course we would prefer if people so antithetical to our values did not use" I mean just the…

> Just imagine the anger when it would come to a FOSS dev team's attention that is using their product, successfully even...

Err, this is something a lot of FOSS dev' have been complaining about actually. There has been complain in the past directed toward Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon and many top-100 company for using free software without contributing anything back (code or financial support), or again, because they are disliked by the original FOSS team.

This "woke" word has been thrown around left and right at this point and is completely nonsensical, like SJW before that.

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

#207

Post by rubyist5eva »

FemmeAndroid wrote: post #72
im3w1l wrote: 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.

If you don't legally have access to the platform, you have no claim on license enforcement.

The platform wasn't officially launched, and the accounts were used by exploiting a misconfigured page.

They are under no obligation to release the source code, yet.

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

#208

Post by JohnWhigham »

h2odragon wrote: post #14

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.

Amazon violating open source agreements to host their own version of the product and squeeze the life out of the original company? Not a peep.

People whose political opinions differ from my own use the software? This must be stopped at once.

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

#210

Post by HideousKojima »

s7r wrote: post #121

In terms of "antithetical values", the machine learning project ml5js.org actually did something about this. They bound their open-source license to a Code of Conduct¹, which forbids the use of their ML software for (1) discriminating against marginalized communities, (2) building tools that disingenuously manipulate public opinion, (3) building tools of mass surveillance and prediction to repress the rights of peopl…

That's a surefire way to make sure proprietary software solutions win:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freed...

>I've stated some of my views about other political issues, about activities that are or aren't unjust. Your views might differ, and that's precisely the point. If we accepted programs with usage restrictions as part of a free operating system such as GNU, people would come up with lots of different usage restrictions. There would be programs banned for use in meat processing, programs banned only for pigs, programs banned only for cows, and programs limited to kosher foods. Someone who hates spinach might write a program allowing use for processing any vegetable except spinach, while a Popeye fan might allow use only for spinach. There would be music programs allowed only for rap music, and others allowed only for classical music.

>The result would be a system that you could not count on for any purpose. For each task you wish to do, you'd have to check lots of licenses to see which parts of your system are off limits for that task.

>How would users respond to that? I think most of them would use proprietary systems. Allowing any usage restrictions whatsoever in free software would mainly push users towards nonfree software. Trying to stop users from doing something through usage restrictions in free software is as ineffective as pushing on an object through a long, soft, straight piece of spaghetti.

>It is worse than ineffective; it is wrong too, because software developers should not exercise such power over what users do. Imagine selling pens with conditions about what you can write with them; that would be noisome, and we should not stand for it. Likewise for general software. If you make something that is generally useful, like a pen, people will use it to write all sorts of things, even horrible things such as orders to torture a dissident; but you must not have the power to control people's activities through their pens. It is the same for a text editor, compiler or kernel.

>You do have an opportunity to determine what your software can be used for: when you decide what functionality to implement. You can write programs that lend themselves mainly to uses you think are positive, and you have no obligation to write any features that might lend themselves to activities you disapprove of.

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