People were able to access the service and create accounts. Those people are entitled to the sources.
This would immediately go away if they just posted a tarball of the almost certainly unmodified sources. I guess nobody running this understands what's going on?
If you have no right to a computer service, you have no right to the AGPL code it runs. For example, a company is allowed to make internal GPL-based tools and not have to release their code. If I hack into their service and download the binary, I’m not entitled to the source code.
If the closed beta was meant for a select few, but was found by someone else, that someone else doesn’t have a right to the code just because they managed to get access. Only the select few would be allowed.
The fact that it’s a public web server (with no access controls) does throw a wrench into things, but it’s not as simple as many here make it seem.
> If the closed beta was meant for a select few, but was found by someone else
The license makes no such distinction. The website had no warning that it was a private test, was hosted on the presumed official domain and looked like it went live.
I never received an explicit authorisation by YC to use Hacker News and here I am. I wouldn’t call my access unauthorised even though it was never authorised.
> The license makes no such distinction. The website had no warning that it was a private test, was hosted on the presumed official domain and looked like it went live.
That is true. I mention that in my last paragraph:
> The fact that it’s a public web server (with no access controls) does throw a wrench into things, but it’s not as simple as many here make it seem.
However, simply being accessible is not akin to authorization. If that company tool is accessible to the public through a misconfigured DNS, the courts probably won’t side with me asking for the source.
The law is not black and white (despite what many here think). Judges are humans and will apply judgement as to whether Truth was meant to be accessible or not.
There’s also the fact that the CFAA is a broadly worded law and could easily be wielded by Trump against the people accessing Truth prior to launch. Just say they weren’t authorized and were hacking. They’ll probably lose in court with that argument, but we won’t know until the ruling would come out
> However, simply being accessible is not akin to authorization.
That’s a hard argument to push unless the judge is unbelievably biased. If the website is up and running on the expected domain, functions correctly and has no indication it’s a private beta, it’s hard to assume bad faith from the unintended users.
IIRC, the idea was tested in the early days of dial up systems and a system that was setup to not require authentication that had a “Welcome to this computer” banner was considered open enough the intruders were not considered intruders.
If you have a building and charge for entry, but there is no access control at the door, no ticket sales and no indication you need to pay to enter, can you complain someone wandered into the building without paying?
This platform is going to be under continuous attack from all angles. The company has to be ready to be boycotted, licenses revoked, regulation enacted, smear campaigns run, deplatformed by infrastructure providers, etc. Their lawyers are going to be the more combative type, when they signed up it was pretty clear the sort of wild-eyed hate that the Trump brand is going to attract from established actors in the social media sphere.
My hope is they're just going to take 20 days to think about it then release the source code. But we'll see.
I doubt there'll be much boycotting; the people who might boycott won't want to use it in the first place. Certainly no regulation will be enacted. I doubt a smear campaign, either; if it's anything like Twitter, a simple screenshot of the homepage will be enough. So the only things are:
• licenses revoked – except with free software, this can only happen if you violate the license
• deplatformed by infrastructure providers – which is part of the reason we need not to have centralisation in the first place.
As much as I dislike this former president, I expect his social media site might actually have better moderation than his Twitter followers had; for PR reasons, if nothing else. I'd rather it wasn't around, but I don't think it's worth taking it down. (Enforcing the AGPL, however? That's worth something.)
> licenses revoked – except with free software, this can only happen if you violate the license
Eh, there _are_ commercial licenses which would have a "don't bring us into disrepute" clause, but you'd imagine they'll probably avoid those. Mind you you'd also imagine they'd avoid violating the AGPL, and yet here we are.
Sorry, I was grammatically ambiguous. Free software is the one where this can only happen if you violate the license, and it's an exception to “traditional” (proprietary) software licensing. Please read the “except” as a fancy “but”. (How dare you not pick up on my intonation‽ It was obvious in the timing of my keypresses!)
I think that certain classes of massive blatant bigotry will be forbidden. Perhaps not as well as Twitter, thinking about it, but still probably better than some of the other sites out there that are tailored to this demographic.
The ulterior motive of this website is simple: the immediate interests of this guy. The ulterior motives of some other websites are harder to see.
_Any_ large social network which was violating the AGPL should expect trouble.
> Their lawyers are going to be the more combative type
But probably not the more competent type, based on the prior adventures of Donald Trump. I mean, this is coming from the same people who brought you Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
They win either way. If mastodon pursues the copyright claim, they get a ton of press and probably more money from donations to fight the “woke Marxists”.
