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Home / News / Blog
Trump's Social Media Platform and the Affero General Public License (of Mastodon)
byBradley M. Kühn
on October 21, 2021
An analysis: Trump's Group has 30 days to remedy the violation, or their rights in the
software are permanently terminated
In 2002, we used phrases like “Web 2.0” and “AJAX”
to describe the revolution that was happening in web technology for average
consumers. This was just before names like Twitter
and Facebook became famous worldwide. Web 2.0 was the groundwork
infrastructure of the “social media” to come.
As software policy folks, my colleagues and I knew that these technologies
were catalysts for change. Software applications, traditionally purchased on
media and installed explicitly, were now implicitly installed through web
browsers — delivered automatically, or even sometimes run on the user's
behalf on someone else's
computer. As copyleft
activists specifically, we knew that copyleft licensing would have to adjust,
too.
In late 2001, I sat and read and reread section 2(c) of the GPLv2. After
much thought, I saw how it could be adapted, using the geeky computer
science
concept called a
quine — a program that has a feature to print its own source code
for the user. A similar section to GPLv2§2(c) could be written that
would assure that every user of a copylefted program on the Internet would
be guaranteed the rights and freedoms to copy, modify, redistribute and/or
reinstall their software — which was done by offering a source-code
provision feature to every user on the network. The key concept behind
the Affero GPL (AGPL)
version 1 was born. Others drafted and released AGPLv1 based on my
idea. Five years later, I was proudly in the “room where it
happened”
when Affero
GPL version 3 was drafted. Some of the words in that section are ones
I suggested.
We were imagining a lot about the future in those days; the task of
copyleft licensing drafting requires trying to foresee how others might
attempt to curtail the software rights and freedoms of others. Predicting
the future is difficult and error-prone. Today, a piece of Affero GPLv3's
future came to pass that I would not have predicted back in November
2007 at its release.
I invented that network source code disclosure provision of the
AGPL — the copyleft
license later applied to the Mastodon
software — in 2002 in light of that very problem: parties who
don't share our values might use (or even contribute to) software written by the FOSS community. 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.
Today, we saw the Trump Media and Technology Group ignoring those important rules
— which were designed for the social good. Once caught in the act,
Trump's Group scrambled and took the site down.
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 (toevery 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.
I and my colleagues at Software Freedom Conservancy are experts at
investigating non-compliance with copyleft license and enforcing those
licenses once we confirm the violations. We will be following this issue
very closely and insisting that Trump's Group give the Corresponding Source
to all who use the site.
Finally, it's worth noting that we could find no evidence that someone
illegally broke into the website. All the evidence available on the Internet
(as of 2021-10-22) indicates that the site was
simply deployed live early as a test, and without proper configuration (such
as pre-reserving some account names). Once discovered, people merely used the
site legitimately to register accounts and use its features.
Update (2021-10-22): Some have asked us
how this situation relates to our Principles of
Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement, since we are publicly analyzing a
copyleft violation publicly. Historically, we did similarly with the Canonical, Ltd., Cambium,
Ubiquiti, and Tesla (twice!) violations. We do believe
that “confidentiality can increase receptiveness and
responsiveness”, but once a story is already made widely known to the public by a
third-party, confidentiality is no longer
possible, since the public already knows the details. At that moment, the need to educate the public supersedes any value in non-disclosure.
[permalink]
Tags:
conservancy,
GPL,
licensing
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