[aazaa]

> 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 demanding that Trump's Group give the Corresponding Source to all who use the site.

What standing does the Software Freedom Conservancy have to do pursue this in court themselves? Are they authors of Mastodon?

AFAICT, unless one of the Mastodon authors gets involved, this is not going to amount to much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law)

This article doesn't even establish whether a commercial license to Mastodon (which would render the AGPL moot) had been obtained by Truth Social or not.

[Jtsummers]

> AFAICT, unless one of the Mastodon authors gets involved, this is not going to amount to much.

That's actually irrelevant as I understand the FOSS license issues around GPL and AGPL. You, as an individual, are entitle to the source code of GPL'd and AGPL'd software (under various circumstances). Suppose I sell or otherwise provide you a program that's based on GPL'd code but only in compiled form. You can request the source from me and I'm obligated to provide it, the original programmers never have to get involved.

[aazaa]

Not from what I understand. Your copyright (by default) gives you standing. If you hold no copyright, you have no standing to claim copyright infringement.

[guerrilla]

It seems like you may be right [1]

1. https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/52/what-can-s...

[newacct583]

One of the goals of the Affero GPL, in fact, was to close exactly that loophole with respect to hosted software. The rights granted by the license are expressly granted to the users of the software. So in theory SFC can sue for the source code themselves under the AGPLv3. I'm not aware that that has been tested, but it seems reasonable.

[aazaa]

I'd be interested in a link to this legal theory and its application under US Law.

Barring that, what sections of the AGPL are you looking at to make that claim?

[Jtsummers]

From the Preamble:

> The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version. [emphasis added]

From Section 13:

> Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph. [emphasis added]

This brings standing to the users as the license requires that the users be granted access to the "Corresponding Source", defined in Section 1 as:

> The "Corresponding Source" for a work in object code form means all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities. However, it does not include the work's System Libraries, or general-purpose tools or generally available free programs which are used unmodified in performing those activities but which are not part of the work. For example, Corresponding Source includes interface definition files associated with source files for the work, and the source code for shared libraries and dynamically linked subprograms that the work is specifically designed to require, such as by intimate data communication or control flow between those subprograms and other parts of the work.

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

[sio8ohPi]

I don't see how this creates standing for end-users. AGPL expands the licensees' obligations, but only the copyright holder has standing to sue over violations of the license.

This is analogous to a party that distributes GPL licensed software in binary form while refuses to fulfill their obligations under the license by providing code.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhoHasThePower

[gpm]

The 30 day clause they are invoking can explicitly only be triggered by a copyright holder as I understand the license. So either they are one, are representing one, or (very unlikely) are somehow flat out wrong despite being lawyers.

Assuming it's not the last case, they would also be aware of any commercial licenses.

[whateveracct]

> What standing does the Software Freedom Conservancy have to do pursue this in court themselves? Are they authors of Mastodon?

They are users of software built on AGPL (Mastodon) and therefore have a right to have access to that source code.

[ayende]

Not as I understand it. In this case, you have two parties, the open source project (Mastodon) and the site itself.

If the site is using the project, it should do so under the license. You, as a user of the site, have rights under that license.

However, the fact that the license terms are violated does not give _you_ a cause of action. The site didn't enter into any contract with you. For there to be a standing, you need the authors of the project to say something.

Even then, note that the issue is the use of copyrighted code, not the fact that the users didn't get the code.

If you complied with the license, and the copyright holder came to you and said, give me money, you could point to the license and say that you are in good standing.

But that doesn't work the other way around, but IANAL.