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Comment by truthsocial | Hacker News Reader

Which we maintain at: https://help.truthsocial.com/legal/open-source/ -- the issue is that had gotten out of date.

While the open source community does actively try to avoid lawsuits, others have let their source code releases get out of date with their actual website before. Usually this results in intervention from a group such as the SFC, backed with very gentle and politely–worded reminders that lawsuits are possible and are occasionally necessary. I believe that they will also remind you that revocation of the license is a possible remedy, although one that they earnestly hope to avoid. Their goal will be to help you find a way to get yourself back into compliance with the license, making the lawsuit unnecessary. They’re pretty good at this; approximately 90% of organizations that find themselves out of compliance manage, with the SFC’s help, to get themselves back on track without involving the courts. You can read more about it at https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/ if you want.

So, you don’t maintain it. Irregular updates aren’t maintenance. Maintenance is regular and scheduled. Stop trying to weasel your way out of the law!

Not the law, these are just license terms.

Contract law covers licenses. Just because it’s not criminal doesn’t mean it’s not important to follow. Also, regardless of the fact this is contract law, do you think it’s okay to take code other made and use it without following the licenses? Especially for a rich media corporation? That’s shameful if true.

> do you think it’s okay to yadda yadda yadda

No, I never said that. You made it up yourself and pretended that I said it.

There is a difference between honoring an agreement between equals (such as a license) and obeying the law.

I never said you said it, I asked it. As stated previously, license are contract law.

You imagined some meaning not present in the words I wrote, and asked me if that’s what I meant. This is a way of implying that my words had this imagined meaning. You should avoid doing that.

Contract law does not explicitly state that every provision of every contract must always be followed. By definition, contract law really has nothing to do with the specific circumstances of any particular agreement; if it did, it would just be a law about those circumstances and not about contracts. In fact, it was not until two years ago that a court acknowledged that the GPL really is a contract (https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/may/16/vizio-remand-win/).

All I am saying is that you shouldn’t ask them not to try to weasel out of their obligations under “the law”, but instead to ask that they not try to weasel out of their obligations under the terms of the AGPL. This is a contract that they entered in to not just with the authors of the open–source software that they rely on, but also with their users. It would be dishonorable to renege.

> Also, regardless of the fact this is contract law, do you think it’s okay to take code other made and use it without following the licenses? Especially for a rich media corporation? That’s shameful if true.

Not defending Truth Social, but let's ask GitHub that same question after Microsoft trained on GPL and AGPL source code for its GitHub Copilot uses and it is known for outputting GPL and AGPL code. [0]

As Truth Social should comply with the AGPL, GitHub should do the same and open source the whole of Copilot.

[0] https://codeium.com/blog/copilot-trains-on-gpl-codeium-does-...

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