Former President Donald Trump’s new social media company has 30 days to make its software source code public or risk losing it, the developer said in a letter.
Mastodon, an open-source social media platform, wrote to the chief legal officer of Trump’s TRUTH Social Tuesday requesting it comply with Mastodon’s open-source software license or face the potential of losing access to the software.
“On Oct. 26, we sent a formal letter to Truth Social’s chief legal officer, requesting the source code to be made publicly available in compliance with the license,” Mastodon co-founder Eugen Rochko said in a Friday press release. “Truth Social has 30 days to comply or the license may be permanently revoked.”
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Mastodon previously alluded to legal action over screenshots apparently showing TRUTH Social had lifted code from the software developer without attribution, with founder Eugen Rochko saying earlier this month that he “intend[ed] to seek legal action.”
The former president’s social media company came under scrutiny after hackers discovered a backdoor link into the website’s beta. Within hours of the Oct. 20 launch, trolls had made several fake accounts impersonating Trump and his associates before TRUTH Social’s team took down their accounts. When screenshots leaked from the beta, users discovered that the website was running on Mastodon, open-source software used to create social networks separate from Big Tech.
Mastodon operates under an AGPLv3 open-source license, which requires any company or person who uses the code and modifies it to make the modifications publicly accessible. Other developers can also use that code if they so choose. Gab, a right-wing social network, also uses this software for its user base.
Despite Mastodon’s terms of use, TRUTH Social’s terms claim the website and all its source code and software are the proprietary property of Trump Media & Technology Group, implying that the software or any changes that TMTG makes will not be publicly accessible, an apparent breach of the AGPLv3 license.
Mastodon said Friday, “as far as personal feelings are concerned [regarding Trump], of course we would prefer if people so antithetical to our values did not use and benefit from our labour,” but the company noted political differences weren’t the letter’s impetus.
“The only issue we can take with something like Truth Social is if they don’t even comply with the free software license we release our work under,” the company added.
The Software Freedom Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that provides support and legal services for open-source software, warned TMTG on Oct. 22 that it would sue the special purpose acquisition company if it did not open its source code for users to access within 30 days. The organization has not responded to date.
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Ever since Trump was de-platformed from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites for his words and actions preceding the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill attack, he has railed against Big Tech, arguing the platforms censored him. Trump sued to get his Twitter and Facebook accounts reinstated in early October, and he brought a class-action lawsuit in July alleging censorship.
