Interesting news from Talking Points memo about Trump's scam, er, I mean social media site:
Former President Trump’s new social network may only have thirty days to live.
Trump launched the app — TRUTH Social — on Wednesday evening. Within hours, members of the open source software community began to notice something: a test version of the…
Interesting news from Talking Points memo about Trump's scam, er, I mean social media site:
Former President Trump’s new social network may only have thirty days to live.
Trump launched the app — TRUTH Social — on Wednesday evening. Within hours, members of the open source software community began to notice something: a test version of the website appeared to be accessible, and it seemed to operate based on a software that already exists, called Mastodon.
Mastodon is a social network that is similar to Twitter. The code is open-source, meaning that anyone can use it, so long as they abide by certain rules: namely, that they agree to make the source code of the modified version available to the public.
TRUTH Social did not do so.
On Thursday, Mastodon’s founder Eugen Rochko told TPM that TRUTH was not only using his code, but appeared to have violated the terms under which others can use it.
That claim could be enforced through the courts, and Rochko said that he would speak with attorneys about the matter.
“Mastodon exists under that license because the Mastodon developers seek to assure that anyone who gets copies of the software gets full source code and changes or modifications or configurations that anyone else has done,” Bradley Kuhn, Policy Fellow at Software Freedom Conservancy, told TPM.
That specific requirement exists thanks to the Afferro General Public License, which Kuhn helped develop. It mandates that anyone who uses the code of software under the license must make modifications publicly available. Though the software in question is open-source, it’s not in the public domain, Kuhn explained.
So, what happens in the case of a violation?
Kuhn’s organization plays a role in enforcing licenses, either through discussions with possible violators on how to remedy the problem, or via litigation.
This week, for example, the Software Freedom Conservancy filed a lawsuit against TV company Vizio, alleging that the company’s TVs use open source software without abiding by the terms of the license under which the code is available, while also staking out a claim that consumers can sue over license violations.
In the case of TRUTH Social, the potential violation appeared on a test site for the platform, which experts quickly identified as based on Mastodon. The site has since been taken off the internet and is no longer accessible to the public.
But that doesn’t fix the problem: as long as the software was altered and existed in public without the underlying code being made available, there is likely a claim, Kuhn said.
The violation itself triggers a 30 period to remedy the issue.
“In this situation, if Trump does not remedy this violation in 30 days, and then on and a half years from now or one and a half weeks from now, whenever they’re planning to deploy the final site, they will be in violation because they lost their entire permission,” Kuhn said.
That could give Mastodon — or anyone who used the test site and did not receive the underlying code — grounds to sue, Kuhn said, alleging that the license was violated.
To remedy it, TRUTH has an option, Kuhn said: “They could announce that they’re going to comply with the license.” That would mean making the underlying code public.
Alternatively, nobody is forcing the Trump site to use Mastodon.
“If they never want to give the source code to anybody, they could just not use Mastodon,” Kuhn argued. “Ceasing use is always an option for compliance.”
30 days is long enough for plenty of suckers, er, I mean, investors to pony up a small mountain of cash. At this point, anyone who sinks good money into any enterprise even remotely connected to former president whatsisname, deserves to be left holding an empty bag.
Just watch for for Trump to surreptitiously bale out of any stocks that he holds during the period to take the money and run. He will then put on the same sort of media campaign as with Twitter etc; The Washington Swamp is trying to shut me up, they are afraid of me! He's laughing all the way to the bank....if any bank will now touch him. Much work for the SEC fraud investigators I think but not enough time to do it before election cutoffs.
In international comparisons of "corruption" the US doesn't fare particularly well coming 25th in a scale of "clean" countries....Scandinavia, Singapore and Switzerland taking the prizes.
I remember last summer, when the Democrats tried to include a measure to empower the IRS to collect outstanding taxes (mainly from businesses) as a way to help fund the Build Back Better bills. It was one of the first things on the cutting room floor. Seems NO ONE in power wants the IRS to have any teeth.
And most of the 130% of stock traded on the day pledged only at the margin and often resold before even having to put up the 10% funding! No cost and all profit
There's two issues about the tech part of this venture. The lesser of them is the apparent violation of the Affero General Public License. That one is easy to remedy: whoever implemented Mastodon for this project simply needs to post any changes they made to someplace like a Github repository, and tell people who ask where to find those changes. They can fix this in a matter of minutes. I honestly think this complaint is overblown by popular media.
The bigger issue is information security and hacker resistance. Building hack-resistant and crash-resistant web properties is quite difficult. It takes time, patience, and clear-headedness. When I've done it I've hired penetration testers (sometimes known as "white hat hackers") to break in and tell our team how they did it, so we can fix the most obvious problems before making the web property live. That can't be done overnight, and needs to be redone with every upgrade. (It's very likely that Substack, this web property, does the same.)
There's no such thing as a hacker-proof web property. Anybody who claims otherwise has been taking too many happy pills. Real-world web properties, especially well-known ones, need ongoing security monitoring.
Can these guys handle the information security? We shall see.
Given the kind of people who would be willing to work for a guy with the employer history of Trump, let alone what a fucking moron you have to be to be a Trumper to begin with, I doubt any of them were even aware of a tenth of what you have laid out here. And thanks so much for the "technical" eduation, since I didn't know any of that.
I read about the Mastodon issue yesterday. Like everything else Trump & Co do, it is underhanded and is part of his well documented behaviors of something for nothing – have a rally, stiff the venue and don't pay the local law enforcement for the security provided; use a piece of music, don't pay the royalty fees; use software or a platform, violate the rules and cry foul when caught; create a nonprofit charity use donor money to buy a portrait; hire contractors/construction crews, stiff them.
There are decades of examples of Trump's illegal doings and still he's out there spoiling the pudding and getting away with it. And certainly, Mastodon can sue if the violation is not remedied. But like everything else the Mastodon thing is just more of the same old same old and will likely drag on until Trump is shut down, once and for all.
Interesting news from Talking Points memo about Trump's scam, er, I mean social media site:
Former President Trump’s new social network may only have thirty days to live.
Trump launched the app — TRUTH Social — on Wednesday evening. Within hours, members of the open source software community began to notice something: a test version of the website appeared to be accessible, and it seemed to operate based on a software that already exists, called Mastodon.
Mastodon is a social network that is similar to Twitter. The code is open-source, meaning that anyone can use it, so long as they abide by certain rules: namely, that they agree to make the source code of the modified version available to the public.
TRUTH Social did not do so.
On Thursday, Mastodon’s founder Eugen Rochko told TPM that TRUTH was not only using his code, but appeared to have violated the terms under which others can use it.
That claim could be enforced through the courts, and Rochko said that he would speak with attorneys about the matter.
“Mastodon exists under that license because the Mastodon developers seek to assure that anyone who gets copies of the software gets full source code and changes or modifications or configurations that anyone else has done,” Bradley Kuhn, Policy Fellow at Software Freedom Conservancy, told TPM.
That specific requirement exists thanks to the Afferro General Public License, which Kuhn helped develop. It mandates that anyone who uses the code of software under the license must make modifications publicly available. Though the software in question is open-source, it’s not in the public domain, Kuhn explained.
So, what happens in the case of a violation?
Kuhn’s organization plays a role in enforcing licenses, either through discussions with possible violators on how to remedy the problem, or via litigation.
This week, for example, the Software Freedom Conservancy filed a lawsuit against TV company Vizio, alleging that the company’s TVs use open source software without abiding by the terms of the license under which the code is available, while also staking out a claim that consumers can sue over license violations.
In the case of TRUTH Social, the potential violation appeared on a test site for the platform, which experts quickly identified as based on Mastodon. The site has since been taken off the internet and is no longer accessible to the public.
But that doesn’t fix the problem: as long as the software was altered and existed in public without the underlying code being made available, there is likely a claim, Kuhn said.
The violation itself triggers a 30 period to remedy the issue.
“In this situation, if Trump does not remedy this violation in 30 days, and then on and a half years from now or one and a half weeks from now, whenever they’re planning to deploy the final site, they will be in violation because they lost their entire permission,” Kuhn said.
That could give Mastodon — or anyone who used the test site and did not receive the underlying code — grounds to sue, Kuhn said, alleging that the license was violated.
To remedy it, TRUTH has an option, Kuhn said: “They could announce that they’re going to comply with the license.” That would mean making the underlying code public.
Alternatively, nobody is forcing the Trump site to use Mastodon.
“If they never want to give the source code to anybody, they could just not use Mastodon,” Kuhn argued. “Ceasing use is always an option for compliance.”
30 days is long enough for plenty of suckers, er, I mean, investors to pony up a small mountain of cash. At this point, anyone who sinks good money into any enterprise even remotely connected to former president whatsisname, deserves to be left holding an empty bag.
Just watch for for Trump to surreptitiously bale out of any stocks that he holds during the period to take the money and run. He will then put on the same sort of media campaign as with Twitter etc; The Washington Swamp is trying to shut me up, they are afraid of me! He's laughing all the way to the bank....if any bank will now touch him. Much work for the SEC fraud investigators I think but not enough time to do it before election cutoffs.
Thanks for clarifying. Where IS the SEC in all of this? Will anyone EVER be held accountable for ANYTHING? 🙄
In international comparisons of "corruption" the US doesn't fare particularly well coming 25th in a scale of "clean" countries....Scandinavia, Singapore and Switzerland taking the prizes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
and hence the resistance of the Republicans to funding a real IRS service that could police the system and catch the criminals!
I remember last summer, when the Democrats tried to include a measure to empower the IRS to collect outstanding taxes (mainly from businesses) as a way to help fund the Build Back Better bills. It was one of the first things on the cutting room floor. Seems NO ONE in power wants the IRS to have any teeth.
He said "laws"...perhaps he meant lawyers.
And most of the 130% of stock traded on the day pledged only at the margin and often resold before even having to put up the 10% funding! No cost and all profit
It’s the foreign “investors” that concern me. Seems like a semi-legal way to get foreign campaign contributions.
"Seems like a semi-legal way to get foreign campaign contributions."
And maybe launder a few rubles at the same time?
That will go into his pocket.
There's two issues about the tech part of this venture. The lesser of them is the apparent violation of the Affero General Public License. That one is easy to remedy: whoever implemented Mastodon for this project simply needs to post any changes they made to someplace like a Github repository, and tell people who ask where to find those changes. They can fix this in a matter of minutes. I honestly think this complaint is overblown by popular media.
The bigger issue is information security and hacker resistance. Building hack-resistant and crash-resistant web properties is quite difficult. It takes time, patience, and clear-headedness. When I've done it I've hired penetration testers (sometimes known as "white hat hackers") to break in and tell our team how they did it, so we can fix the most obvious problems before making the web property live. That can't be done overnight, and needs to be redone with every upgrade. (It's very likely that Substack, this web property, does the same.)
There's no such thing as a hacker-proof web property. Anybody who claims otherwise has been taking too many happy pills. Real-world web properties, especially well-known ones, need ongoing security monitoring.
Can these guys handle the information security? We shall see.
Given the kind of people who would be willing to work for a guy with the employer history of Trump, let alone what a fucking moron you have to be to be a Trumper to begin with, I doubt any of them were even aware of a tenth of what you have laid out here. And thanks so much for the "technical" eduation, since I didn't know any of that.
Greetings Roland!
I read about the Mastodon issue yesterday. Like everything else Trump & Co do, it is underhanded and is part of his well documented behaviors of something for nothing – have a rally, stiff the venue and don't pay the local law enforcement for the security provided; use a piece of music, don't pay the royalty fees; use software or a platform, violate the rules and cry foul when caught; create a nonprofit charity use donor money to buy a portrait; hire contractors/construction crews, stiff them.
There are decades of examples of Trump's illegal doings and still he's out there spoiling the pudding and getting away with it. And certainly, Mastodon can sue if the violation is not remedied. But like everything else the Mastodon thing is just more of the same old same old and will likely drag on until Trump is shut down, once and for all.
Yikes, I meant greetings TC!! Pardon!!!
Hi Daria!
That’s the second time this year somebody confused me with TC. I will repeat what I said the other time:
I take it as a compliment. We are both shit disturbers.
Roland and TC are in fact the same person. Have you ever seen both of them in the same room? Have you??? :-)
😆!
Roland must be the Mr. Hyde to TC’s Dr. Jekyll. 😁
Wow. Sizzlin’, TC. Sizzlin’.