Mastodon's Founder Says Trump's New Social Network Is Just Mastodon | Hacker News Reader

Mastodon's Founder Says Trump's New Social Network Is Just Mastodon

vice.com

53 pointsM2Ys4U24 comments

Truth Social should publish its source code. Gab has published its code ever since it switched to being based on Mastodon. There is no justification for Truth Social to continue violating Mastodon's AGPLv3 license.

https://code.gab.com/gab/gab-open-source

Last updated 7 months ago? There is no way they've gone that long without updating anything in their codebase, does this imply that they are no longer following the license (or does the license allow delays of this sort)? Also I seem to recall in the past being able to access their codebase but it was just a normal repo with recent commits (I can't remember how long ago this was, I believe it was shortly before/after they got hacked).

If Gab really has updated its production code since then, then that's a license violation and they should update their repo. But, I don't know if this is the case.

Yes, it's disappointing that they switched from having all files tracked in version control to this password-protected archive. However, it is good that they released the code and Truth Social should try to meet or preferably surpass the standard that Gab is setting.

Trump, looking for justification to do something that adheres to the norms? Are you joking? Who is going to stop him? "Society"?

I hope they're giving their IT on this "hazard pay" rates.

Imagine the thrill of owning the server(s) that the entire (technically able to put a stick in your spokes) Internet hates. Keeping that shit running will be a badge of sysadmin honor.

question: would you yourself want that "badge of sysadmin honor" on your resume?

I feel that if it were to be known that I was involved with this in any way, it'd kill every future job prospect I'd be willing to take. And you'd better keep your resume up to date considering how quick the employer here is known to be in issuing pink slips and other forms of workplace hostility.

Good point. Depends on your goals. If you wanted to be generally employable, no; no matter your actual ideology associating with the wrong tribe can be lethal now.

If you're comfortable phrasing it as "maintained high load servers in extremely adversarial circumstances" it might be worth it... If you can find an employer who can value that without judging why you might choose to do it.

>If you can find an employer who can value that without judging why you might choose to do it.

I've seen job boards posted here for employers to exclusively filter for conservative and right-wing employees. Half the US would not only hire such a person, they'd probably give them a raise for the cause.

politics aside, these are red flags for hostile working environments and will repel anyone with competence.

What do you do when the only non-hostile working environments hire people not of your tribe?

consult.

> I feel that if it were to be known that I was involved with this in any way, it'd kill every future job prospect I'd be willing to take.

If true, and I agree with you that I think it is, it's a sad indictment on the industry and the polarisation of society in general.

just because the mastodon software exists doesn't mean that operating the software is going to be a breeze, especially at the sort of scale this site is going to see.

They better have some ace devops folks working on this. Somehow I don't think they do though, and would expect to see some high-profile incidents pop up in the future.

Not sure what to think about this. The title has a negative connotation, which is surprising coming from the founder. But, if they pull it off it puts Mastadon squarely on the map.

The issue is Truth Social is using Mastodon without attribution and claiming in it's terms of use that Truth Social's code is proprietary which is probably in violation of Mastodon's AGPLv3 license.

I don't think their claim is that accurate. The complete paragraph in their terms reads like this:

> Unless otherwise indicated, the Site is our proprietary property and all source code, databases, functionality, software, website designs, audio, video, text, photographs, and graphics on the Site (collectively, the “Content”) and the trademarks, service marks, and logos contained therein (the “Marks”) are owned or controlled by us or licensed to us, and are protected by copyright and trademark laws and various other intellectual property rights and unfair competition laws of the United States, foreign jurisdictions, and international conventions.

They are talking about the proprietary property of the site (which is correct), and for the source code they are saying it's "owned or controlled by us or licensed to us". So in my understanding this part is correct.

The only issue is they doesn't display the notice that the code is based on Mastodon and doesn't share the modified source code. This is in fact against AGPL. The problem with this accusation is they never launched the service officialy in the first, some people who got access to an URL which wasn't supposed to be released to the public (and apparently this URL is unacessible already), so I think a legal dispute is a hard case right now. Now they can get away by just fixing it before the launch.

IANAL but it seems you could make the argument that by not making the modified source available under the AGPLv3 they would clearly be in violation of the AGPLv3 license which would negate their claim that the source code is licensed to them. Wouldn't they need to currently be in compliance with the license in order to excise the rights conferred by the license?

Yes, I meant to say they can claim it's licensed to then as long as they follow all the license terms.

Also IANAL but I believe they can make the claim that they are not violating the license terms since the site was not meant to be publicly available and the access that some people obtained was not authorized (and I think this is a strong argument since they blocked the access as soon as it was discovered).

One can say that the mere fact that the site was accessible, even if unintentional, was enough to configure it to be distributed, and therefore required to follow the full license terms (in fact, I think this is the position that GNU takes), but I don't think this argument would be so strong in an actual legal battle,

Maybe they haven't modified the source at all?

Can't tell for sure because I don't know the platform enough, but from what I've seen on the leaked screenshots there are some layout changes that apparently couldn't be done without modifying the code.

The accusations seem baseless if it all comes down to layout or templating. Meets my expectations of Vice coverage.

Gab already did this and the net of it was probably somewhat negative for Mastodon. Fundamentally the users of these systems don't know or care what's under the hood, and the people running these instances are surely not going to trumpet the fact they just used something created by open source communists.

Good for him and OpenSrc. I won't be signing up, but I wish them the best. The part about Truth.social claiming all src beining proprietary sounds disappointing, but then this is Vice covering Trump so who knows?

The outrage over Trump evading book burnings is more interesting than the event.

I don't doubt Vice is covering this accurately.

I feel sorry for trump and I hope he at least has some fun with this project, I mean its not every day that you get the chance for a term or two in the highest office of the USA and then to be ridiculed for the dumpster fires that resulted has to grate on the guy. Think of it, he's not getting any younger and it has to be pretty clear even to him that he's generally considered to be a failure, especially given his embarrassing behavior post election.

I hope enough folks join up that it becomes a positive experience for him, with his last attempt it was obvious even to him nobody was interested.

Really, the story of trump is just all around sad and I'm not so mean I can't feel sorry for the guy.

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