Trump’s Social Network Sneakily Admits It’s Based On Open-Source Platform
Image via Michael Candelori / Shutterstock.com
Back in October, former US President Donald Trump announced the launch of TRUTH Social, an all-new social media site set to go live in the first quarter of 2022. However, it was soon revealed that the site was a clone of an open-source networking platform, Mastodon.
At the time, the platform’s founder confirmed to VICE’s Motherboard that Trump’s site was indeed based on his code, though TRUTH Social did not comply with the licensing requirements, which stated that it needed to make “the source code and any modifications to it available to the public.”
The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), which enforces open-source licenses, said that if Trump’s platform failed to comply with Mastodon’s requirements, the site’s rights would “automatically and permanently” be terminated.
Now, in a seeming effort to avoid litigation, it appears TRUTH Social has heeded the warning. It has a dedicated “open source” section, in which it displays a ZIP archive to Mastodon’s original code.
The site wrote: “Our goal is to support the open-source community no matter what your political beliefs are. That’s why the first place we go to find amazing software is the community and not ‘Big Tech’.”
Mastodon’s founder, Eugen Rochko, told PCMag he would not be filing any lawsuits at the moment, detailing, “We haven’t received any communication back from them, but they’ve uploaded a ZIP archive of the source code, which for now seems to bring them in compliance.”
Let’s wait and see what TRUTH Social holds for the internet once it officially launches next year.
[via PCMag, cover image via Michael Candelori / Shutterstock.com]
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