Ripping off (A)GPL software is nothing particularly new, but this is a remarkably haphazard and visible attempt to do so.
i mean let's be real who is ever going to work for this thing, the amount of qualified engineers who are going to sign up for Trump's Mastodon media clone you can probably count on one hand.
Which might arguably be the biggest problem all of these companies are going to have, how are these people ever going to find actual developers
I'm not one of them, but I also put active effort into not letting my social spheres from taint my view of "the other"'s ability too much.
However, Trump and the folks in his immediate circle seem to drive away competence through a special combination of malice, selfishness, pettiness, projection, and short-sightedness that boggles the mind. Set aside ideology for a minute; it seems like not paying the bills is standard procedure for their organization, and I don't know who would stand for it regardless of their ideology.
And yet somehow there are always suckers that he can convince to do his shit for free. Of course there is a promise of payment, but the check never arrives.
I just want GGP to know that there are plenty of smart people willing to work on such a project (assuming they get paid) - and I want to combat this idea that the "other side" is just a bunch of bumbling bozos who don't know the difference between a bit and a byte.
There's likely also a small number of people who would work on this just because they believe in Trump's ideology, and would like to see Truth exist more than they'd like to get paid on a regular basis.
You also seriously underestimate number of people pissed off about having spout the latest woke tropes to continue being employed at FAANG, those will go for much lower rate.
Not of the country it didn't.
Significantly less than half of the significantly less than half of the the country that voted at all voted for this guy.
Or, an alternate phrasing, significantly less than half the slightly more than half of eligible voters that actually voted at all voted for this guy.
But, in any case, nowhere near half of the country voted for him.
I don't doubt there would be engineers willing to work on this if 1) the pay was right 2) the culture was right. Do they have the executives in place who know how to set those two things to attract the best engineers? All signs point to no.
If they've changed it at all, they'll need to release that.
Where’s the line? The product provides my content, in the form of html/css/JavaScript/whatever. That’s technically software/copyrightable but isn’t a component of the AGPLed product.
Otherwise, I agree that the AGPL would require distribution of software mods to the product. I can’t imagine why they would modify or how the author would detect such modifications.
Sorry, but I’m still having trouble understanding just what modifications are being discussed. Nothing I’ve read yet talks about specifics. There should at least be a smoking gun, no? Otherwise, post a link to the product and you’re done.
No, not at all; you'd simply have to release the changes you make. For the purposes of this article, your 'users' are anyone who interacts with the software.
> Sorry, but I’m still having trouble understanding just what modifications are being discussed. Nothing I’ve read yet talks about specifics.
Mentioned in the article; they've been removing references to Mastodon from Mastodon. Which you are allowed to do, but at that point you have to release any changes you've made.
Let me ask another way. Did these modifications require a recompile? Pulling a word out of a config file would not constitute a “modification to the software”, merely use as intended.
Actually, it might. Per section 1:
> The "Corresponding Source" for a work in object code form means all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities.
Mastodon is written in Ruby, and large Ruby programs (particularly Rails) usually use Ruby DSLs for configuration. It's very plausible that changes to the config would trigger the AGPL.
But let's be clear: copyright holders get to decide when they enforce their copyrights. They aren't beholden to enforcement the way that trademark holders are. It's perfectly reasonable and legally consistent for a copyright holder to prioritize egregious violations (like TRUTH's) while ignoring smaller ones (like Joe Schmoe forgetting to publish his tuning changes).
Portions modified may not be subject to any form of copyright protection if the original code and/or modifications are purely functional. Purely functional expressions that lack any creative element are not copyrightable to begin with.
This is a more abstract observation than is perhaps relevant to the situation at hand, which involves a group of people modifying software components that the current body of software copyright law would not consider "purely functional."
Under the AGPL, modified forms of the software that are used to provide user services must be distributed under the same terms.