bh, 6 months ago

@Gargron If this is actually a Mastodon instance, are they violating the GPL by not posting the license or the source code?

enobacon, 6 months ago

@bh @Gargron has the question of whether hosted GPL code is "distribution" vs "use" been settled? IDK if you can tell that it's modified vs configured, and where that line is crossed to require posting source code/diffs of the changes.

bh, 6 months ago

@enobacon @Gargron It seems I wasn't precise enough when speaking before-- Mastodon has been AGPL licensed since 7 years ago. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/blob/main/LICENSE If this SO post is to be believed, the "users who interact with the software over a network" clause of that license is meant to protect against this sort of unattributed use by a service provider. https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/11467/can-i-use-gpl-software-to-provide-a-commercial-cloud-service

enobacon, 6 months ago

@bh @Gargron ah, TIL! Yes that would seem to have made this issue explicitly clear.

enobacon, 6 months ago

@bh but does it spell out how the changes and license are to be made available in an easy user-facing way?

enobacon, 6 months ago

@bh There seem to be some loopholes that might allow you to stuff all of this in the fine print for the user agreement only, I'm not a lawyer, there was some mention in the wikipedia page of whether you modify the source to remove any easy download-source links, but I'm not clear from what I've read so far if that is settled.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

bh, 6 months ago

@enobacon Nothing that I could see in their provided policies.