Here’s how it worked, as Bradley M. Kuhn, a free software activist and SFC Policy Fellow and Hacker-in-Residence, sees it.
Mastodon is free and open source software for running self-hosted social networking services. Anyone can use it, as Kuhn observes: “The license purposefully treats everyone equally (even people we don’t like or agree with), but they must operate under the same rules of the copyleft licenses that apply to everyone else.” But, if you use it, you must release the source code or make it possible for users to get the code; Trump and his cronies didn’t. It’s that simple.
The AGPLv3 is one of the less commonly used open source licenses. It’s explicitly designed to ensure that the operator of a network server that provides a service, such as a social network, must provide the source code of the modified version running there to its users.
It’s pretty simple really, but mistakes were made. Once made aware of the issue; however, the site was taken down. But that’s not good enough.
As Kuhn pointed out, the site was live and early users did set up accounts. Whether they wanted it or not, these users did not receive that source code nor were given an option to get it. “And Trump’s Group is currently ignoring their very public requests for it.”
If I may make a suggestion, obey the law, release the code. And, while they’re at it since I doubt very much that Trump et al. want the source code to their tightly restricted and highly-controlled social network to be made public, they hire someone to write a proprietary social network for the site. Good luck with that. Almost all social networks are now built around open-source software.
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