It was distributed under AGPL3 to users interacting with it remotely through a computer network. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html#section13
It's not a matter of whether or not the developers meant to release it.
It's not a matter of whether or not the developers meant to release it.
Software licenses apply to releases, and it is not clear this a release. This is the legal question I am asking about, i.e. Does the developers making this publicly accessible for testing constitute a release?
The developers made this publicly accessible to users interacting with it remotely through a computer network, in violation of the license. What the developers consider a "release" and their incompetence is irrelevant
I'm not asking about whether or not they violated AGPL on a narrow interpretation of the license from a single clause, but whether that caveat in the license is enforceable in this situation. I'm thinking they will have a hard time showing that this constituted a release or distribution under US law.
I was just wanting someone with more legal experience than me to weigh in.
"If you convey a covered work, knowingly relying on a patent license, and the Corresponding Source of the work is not available for anyone to copy, free of charge and under the terms of this License, through a publicly available network server or other readily accessible means, then you must either (1) cause the Corresponding Source to be so available, or (2) arrange to deprive yourself of the benefit of the patent license for this particular work, or (3) arrange, in a manner consistent with the requirements of this License, to extend the patent license to downstream recipients. "Knowingly relying" means you have actual knowledge that, but for the patent license, your conveying the covered work in a country, or your recipient's use of the covered work in a country, would infringe one or more identifiable patents in that country that you have reason to believe are valid."
The use of the qualifier 'patent' in the license definitely doesn't clear anything up if Truth Social wasn't released for commercial consumption.
If this was released for consumers, as some above have suggested, then that's a different case, but I haven't seen any evidence of this, not that I spent much time looking.
The access was not unauthorized. In addition to that, a lot of people thought the service was actually launched - there was no authorization step anywhere in the interface, nor mention that it was a "pre-release" or testing deployment.
> Does the developers making this publicly accessible for testing constitute a release?
This has nothing to do with what was done with the software by which users - they all have the same right to the source. All users have the same rights.
> Does the developers making this publicly accessible for testing constitute a release?
Yes. The software was available to users, therefore, those users have the right to see the modified code of the application they used, as granted by the AGPL3 license to which the website operators agreed.
2. and 3. The license can say whatever it wants and we can interpret it however we want, but at least for US law, it makes a difference whether or not this constituted a release/distribution to be a binding agreement. Non-binding contracts are not enforceable. If you have reporting that it was used by consumers, then this is different, but this doesn't seem to be the case.