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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

#431

Post by margalabargala »

nuerow wrote: post #404
margalabargala wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? I mean, don't you believe you have a say on who you grant permission to use your intellectual property? If the author of some software has a general good-faith position that others should use their software, then the conditions they associate with that software fall on a continuum from "reasonable to "unreasonable". The MIT license is at the reasonable end. Saying "give me ten million dollars for this ROT13 al…

> If the author of some software has a general good-faith position (...) The "good-faith position" weasel words only serve to try to fabricate and cast doubt on the morality of a decision on how your work can and should be used, and only because you find it inconvenient. For some reason, your argument completely eliminates the author from the decision process. Do you find that to be fair or in good faith? Meanwhile,…

The "good faith position" weasel words, along with the rest of my comment regarding the whole thing being a spectrum of subjective reasonableness, serve to make it clear that this is a highly subjective topic where you and I have different opinions.

Where I personally draw the line is something being presented as a "general purpose tool", versus as an exclusive work.

When Stuart Stemple created a pink pigment and granted license to use it to "everyone except Anish Kapoor", I thought it was a great artistic statement, but as a practical matter I think it's unreasonable.

It's the difference between a whitelist and a blacklist. Saying "you can use this if you meet these criteria (e.g. having no criteria, having paid me money, etc)" is okay, but saying "everyone can use this EXCEPT if I decide I don't want you too" is not. In my opinion.

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

#432

Post by randyrand »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #406

Getting into any form of discussion regarding T is unwise. Yet I wanted to point out something Mastodon mission has always been to provide users freedom from and alternatives to the giant faceless autocratic exploitative social media. Or at least that is what I gleam from a search of Mastodon prior to when T ran for president. To now state for the record that T is not supposed to use the software seems like a politic…

what is T?

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

#433

Post by PatentlyDC123 »

cedilla wrote: post #15
usui wrote: post #4

Does a history of enforcement help in cases like this? The article itself says that Truth Social is "antithetical" to Mastodon's values, but that there's nothing they can do about the usage of their software other than license violations. It sounds like they have a bias to enforce their license in this case. If Mastodon has a weak history of enforcing their license to other organizations, does it weaken the case? I'm…

In general, you don't have any obligation to enforce your rights. There is the well-known exception of trademark law, but that's in the nature of the matter. If PepsiCo sells Coca-Cola and the Coca-Cola company doesn't react, then the trade mark obviously doesn't allow customers to identify genuine Coca-Cola.

Your example seems a bit off. Yes, Coca-cola is not required to enforce their trademark via legal means; however, they may lose the ability to prove infringement of the mark later (even in another case) if they do not police use of the mark. I think there was also a case or course of legal thought by some judges that the mark's owner owed a duty (fiduciary maybe?) to actively protect the mark from infringement or risk losing the trademark rights altogether.

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

#434

Post by micromacrofoot »

pyronik19 wrote: post #288
micromacrofoot wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so far most (all?) attempts to create a “conservative” social network end up as sites with large nazi userbases either way, some people are already using the site and the license should apply - the source needs to be available to all of them

hardly any worse than pure vileness of twitter.

I get that you're being glib, and I'm not fan of twitter... but openly supporting ethnic genocide is a lot worse than anything going on with twitter.

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

#435

Post by teddyh »

nixroot wrote: post #393

This is incorrect. Currently Truth is still internal software not available to the public, AGPL requires distribution of source code alongside the distribution of the program or service. Because Truth is only made available internally, the modified source code only has to be made available to their own company. This would change once the service does go public. AGPL can also not be "permanently revoked". It's not ind…

> AGPL can also not be "permanently revoked". It's not individually licensed to each user like proprietary software often is, it's one license addressed to anyone.

The license is addressed to anyone, but an individual user gets an individual license.

> Furthermore the AGPL is explicitly irrevocable.

The Mastodon authors can not choose to revoke the license, but the license itself contain clauses which specify revocation under certain conditions, and after a certain time delay. This is one of the areas in which the GPLv3 (and AGPLv3) is more lenient than the old GPLv2, which was automatically revoked instantly upon any license violation.

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

#436

Post by randyrand »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #199
havkd wrote: 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?

so far most (all?) attempts to create a “conservative” social network end up as sites with large nazi userbases either way, some people are already using the site and the license should apply - the source needs to be available to all of them

what site do “the nazis” use now? Do they just keep to themselves? or do they use other nazi forums.

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

#437

Post by archagon »

roenxi wrote: post #134
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…

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…

Personally, I can’t abide my software being used to harm others. My definition of “harm” will certainly differ from that of others, but for important software, I’d be happy to append a “not for military use” clause to the OSS license, which would beat keeping the software closed source and entirely proprietary.

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

#438

Post by cgriswald »

nuerow wrote: post #383
roenxi wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tolerance, right up to the limit where it actually starts hurting, is the best strategy for a peaceful and prosperous society. Trying to carve out little patches for your type of people and excluding that scary, evil other does not work. We're at Enlightenment+200 years here. I suppose shouldn't have to try make a defence of tolerating different opinions. If they want to license their software however then good luck…

> Tolerance, right up to the limit where it actually starts hurting, is the best strategy for a peaceful and prosperous society. It really is not. Unbounded tolerance is how free and open societies commit suicide and succumb to authoritarian regimes where intolerance is the norm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance > If they want to license their software however then good luck to them, but nonetheless…

>> Tolerance, right up to the limit where it actually starts hurting, is the best strategy for a peaceful and prosperous society.

> It really is not. Unbounded tolerance is how free and open societies commit suicide and succumb to authoritarian regimes where intolerance is the norm.

This is a non sequitur. GP placed a bound on tolerance.

> You're just asserting that refusing to help out authoritarian and outright xenophobic political movements further their goals "is the wrong approach" without any rationale or insight or argument at all.

GP can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think he has asserted anything of the kind. In fact, I suspect he's somewhat opposed to the same, since he's opposed to "illiberal political beliefs" which are themselves quite aligned with "xenophobic political movements".

In any case, I think you've entirely missed the pragmatic points of the GP's post, which is that such illiberal policies are, throughout history, used against the marginalized peoples they are ostensibly intended to protect. Given your previous statement about unbounded tolerance, it feels like you should be in agreement with the GP on this point; unless you're saying we should just skip the tolerance and go straight to intolerance.

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

#439

Post by throwaway0a5e »

knorker wrote: post #264
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have an obligation and in theory (and only in theory) it doesn't matter but a history of doing it anyway sure as shit helps in court.

Does it? This is the first I've heard of it.

Theoretically no, but the court is more likely to side with you if your lawyer can go down the list checking off each reason this lawsuit is like the last one that you won.

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

#440

Post by micromacrofoot »

randyrand wrote: post #436
micromacrofoot wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so far most (all?) attempts to create a “conservative” social network end up as sites with large nazi userbases either way, some people are already using the site and the license should apply - the source needs to be available to all of them

what site do “the nazis” use now? Do they just keep to themselves? or do they use other nazi forums.

chan sites, gab, some forums on tor... I'm honestly not sure if they're trying to hurt conservatives or if the continual embedding into conservative social platforms is an attempt to cling to relevancy?

I don't think all conservatives are nazis by any means, but I'm not a fan of the "any vote we can get" tactics that are hesitant to admonish white supremacy

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