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1. Embed this notice
   feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 05:39:32 JST feld
   @slips it's totally right.
   
   If Toyota wants to modify A/GPL code and use it on, eg, their manufacturing line robots, they're 100% allowed to do it without providing the source.
   
   Now if Toyota wants to sell those robots... that's now a violation.
   
   Some people seem to think that the GPL means "no private modifications can ever exist" which is not true at all.
   
   So in this case, if it's a single user instance the only person that needs to have access to the source is the person using the software. Your ability to send and receive posts to/from this modified Mastodon server does not matter. You are not an injured party by not having access to the source code. But if you get an account on that server, you can absolutely demand the source.
   • Embed this notice
     Sexy Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 05:43:12 JST Sexy Moon

     in reply to
     @feld you are providing a public s2s service
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 05:47:19 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Sexy Moon
     @Moon I don't think that qualifies. That's like saying "I made a private modification to Exim, now I have to share my changes because people can send and receive email from my server"
   • Embed this notice
     Sexy Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 05:47:56 JST Sexy Moon

     in reply to
     @feld if exim was AGPL you would
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 05:48:45 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Sexy Moon
     @Moon although there is one difference here: even if you had paying customers hosting their email with your modified Exim you wouldn't have to share those change because it's GPLv2, not AGPL
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 05:49:30 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Sexy Moon
     @Moon nope, not unless you were providing a *service* to users. Being able to reach you is not a "service". Hosting their fedi accounts / email would be a "service" -- that turns it into SAAS and they are your "customers".
   • Embed this notice
     Sexy Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 05:53:16 JST Sexy Moon

     in reply to
     @feld if you stick it on the public internet and people use it with or without an account it's covered
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 05:54:45 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Sexy Moon
     @Moon consider that by your logic any developer working on a new Mastodon feature and has their test server on the public internet is in violation of the license for not yet having published the changes yet
   • Embed this notice
     Sexy Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 05:56:06 JST Sexy Moon

     in reply to
     @feld that is correct and in fact this argument was used by mastodon when gab had a test server accessible on the public internet to argue they had to release all their source code.
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 06:01:50 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Sexy Moon
     @Moon in my scenario nobody can "use it" without an account. No public timelines, no AGPL'd assets are ever served to unauthorized users. Only the activitypub API endpoints reachable
   • Embed this notice
     Sexy Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 06:04:15 JST Sexy Moon

     in reply to
     @feld I am arguing that if it pushes to or is pulled from anyone else, they are entitled to source.
   • Embed this notice
     Sexy Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 06:08:22 JST Sexy Moon

     in reply to

     • Sexy Moon
     @feld my position (and I will try to confirm it with license wording later) is that the intent of AGPL was to avoid where you were interacting with networked services and you don't get the source because it was GPL2. In a world where there are many thousands of private mail servers, if they didn't have to make source public the source would just be corralled again which I believe goes against the goal of preventing that from happening.
     :blobancap: :blobcattrans: :blobancap: :blobcattrans: :blobancap: :blobcattrans: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Sexy Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 06:18:17 JST Sexy Moon

     in reply to
     @feld I checked the AGPL wording and it frustratingly is not clear, it mentions users one time and not directly other access. However if we were talking about a web server offering HTTP, everyone accessing content via http would be entitled to the source or again AGPL just wouldn't work for a web server and that seems untrue.
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 06:44:38 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Sexy Moon
     @Moon gotta remember that almost all of this is still legal theory. It's ideas made up by the FSF and has never been thoroughly tested in courts.
   • Embed this notice
     Fantasia (fantasia@clubcyberia.co)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 06:59:02 JST Fantasia

     in reply to

     • Sexy Moon
     @feld @Moon
     
     
     Legal action for license violations are a mixed bag:
     
     I'm young but old enough to remember when both FFmpeg and LibAV had a "hall of shame" list of projects that violated the LGPL license:
     
     https://web.archive.org/web/20110315033544/http://libav.org/
     https://web.archive.org/web/20110224020701/http://ffmpeg.org/
     
     Despite the threat to sue none of these projects ever were and both projects discontinued their "Hall of Shame".
     
     On the other hand, the company behind Ghostscript sued another company for an GPL violation and won:
     
     https://qz.com/981029/a-federal-court-has-ruled-that-an-open-source-license-is-an-enforceable-contract
     
     I doubt the developers of Mastodon or Firefish are going to pursue legal action or publicly shame a one user instance not sharing their code, regardless of what the AGPL says.
   • Embed this notice
     Sexy Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 06:59:02 JST Sexy Moon

     in reply to

     • Fantasia
     @fantasia @feld I don't share the source code of my in-progress work on my test server. but if someone asked, I would. I admit that is really inconvenient.
     feld likes this.