Random Company Violates a GPL License
You wonder if they are thinking “oops” or having a meltdown
Today I read about a social network called Truth Social that blatantly copied code from an open source social media app called Mastodon.
To be clear, Mastodon is a company with an army of open-source developers working on it, and it’s social media app is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License (v3).
This license basically says that you’re free to blatantly rip the code off into your own app as long as you let everybody download the source code of your app.
How is AGPLv3 different from GPLv3?
AGPLv3 has one key clause in it that GPLv3 does not have. It’s intended to be used for network service software.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. […]
In plain English, it basically means this:
[…] If your software can interact with users remotely through a computer network, you should also make sure that it provides a way for users to get its source.
For example, if your program is a web application, its interface could display a “Source” link that leads users to an archive of the code.
There are many ways you could offer source, and different solutions will be better for different programs; see section 13 for the specific requirements. […]
Conveniently, this very text is also contained at the end of the license and it tries to explain what the legal jargon in the first quote means.
In case it’s still not clear by now what he added condition is, read this one-liner from the Free Software Foundation website:
if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the modified version running there.
Which basically hits social media networks straight in the eye, because it means you can’t clone. Social network without also providing its source code.
And what does the source code do? It allows other people to run other copies of your social network. That is why you see Mastodon hosted on random, private domains.
What is Truth Social and should I care?
Truth Social is a social network created by a company called Trump Media Technology Group, a social media company that is apparently backed by former US president Trump — who needs no introduction.
They have been billing Truth Social as a proprietary app, but were caught using files on Mastodon sources inside their HTML code. Oops.
And to make matters worse for them, the Software Freedom Conservancy — you might know them as the organization behind the Debian Linux distribution — gave hem 30 days to comply with the AGPLv3 (which means, either released the source or build their entire app from scratch), or they will sue them.
Has the SFC had success with suing anyone yet? That remains to be seen, as I don’t recall any lawsuit from them at this scale. But they might just have a change, if Trump chronically underfunds his own media company. Just like he did with his — uh, you know — his government administration?
It also remains to be seen whether they are having a corporate meltdown over this.
Now we come to the other question: “should you care?” If you ask me, the answer is going to be “no”, because the whole Truth Social concept looks like it’s just a desperate attempt by some people to get attention.
So why give it to them?
