Donald Trump Runs Face First Into Intellectual Property Buzzsaw
Shocking exactly no one, Donald Trump’s new social media venture — Truth Social — turned out to be a slapdash effort that played fast and loose with the law. Which is heartbreaking because I think we were all pulling for this plucky underdog to finally break through.
Rather than invest the time and money required to build a legitimate challenger to the social media powerhouses that facilitated his rise, Trump threw a few bucks and maybe a free Trump steak or two at some software folks to put together a bare bones alternative where his fans are free to share vaccine misinformation and threaten government officials while Trump collects their personal data for his all but inevitable 2024 run. A win-win.
Truth Social describes its source code — and everything else about the platform — as proprietary, which is a big problem under the AGPLv3 license that Mastodon uses, requiring anyone using the open-source code to release the amended code to the public. Trump was unwilling to do so and now Trump is on notice that Mastodon means business:
Early evidence strongly supports that Trump’s Group publicly launched a so-called “test site” of their “Truth Social” product, based on the AGPLv3’d Mastodon software platform. Many users were able to create accounts and use it — briefly. However, when you put any site on the Internet licensed under AGPLv3, the AGPLv3 requires that you provide (to every user) an opportunity to receive the entire Corresponding Source for the website based on that code. These early users did not receive that source code, and Trump’s Group is currently ignoring their very public requests for it. To comply with this important FOSS license, Trump’s Group needs to immediately make that Corresponding Source available to all who used the site today while it was live. If they fail to do this within 30 days, their rights and permissions in the software are automatically and permanently terminated. That’s how AGPLv3’s cure provision works — no exceptions — even if you’re a real estate mogul, reality television star, or even a former POTUS.
https://abovethelaw.com/2021/10/dona...perty-buzzsaw/

Another failed business from the loser that lost money from a hotel named after a loser.