Donald Trump’s future social network, Truth Social, is already in hot water for violating a free and open-source software license with the decentralized social network script known as Mastodon. The Truth Social was also already hacked with people signing up as Donald Trump and posting disgusting photos of a pig defecating on itself.
Trump’s network was built on the FREE software which suggests in the terms of the license, that users must provide an open source to their coding.
Many other networks use this and provide open source access to their code. Truth Social was trying to avoid that, which then violates the license of the FREE software they’re building their network on.
It was the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) who pointed out the obvious violation. As it stands, the Trump Media and Technology Group has only 30 days to make their code open source or face the consequences.
Not going by the license agreement means Trump Social needs to comply ASAP or rebuild their entire site using their own custom code instead of Mastodon, as they could cut Trump’s network off and end the agreement.
Since Mastodon is open source, anyone with knowledge of how to use it is permitted to do so, with the notion that anyone using it clearly pays attention to the licensing. After all, it’s FREE software, potentially saving people thousands in development costs – of course, if they follow the rules – one of which is remaining open source.
Taking things a step further, Trump’s network tried to say the code/service was “proprietary” – but it was mostly just Mastodon’s code and whatever else the developers for Truth Social had added to it.
The Verge reported that Truth Social even tried to hide a copy of Mastodon’s logo as a bug: “Truth Social doesn’t comply with that license and, in fact, refers to its service as “proprietary.” Its developers apparently attempted to scrub references that would make the Mastodon connection clear — at one point listing a “sighting” of the Mastodon logo as a bug — but included direct references to Mastodon in the site’s underlying HTML alongside obvious visual similarities.”
It should be noted that the software license for Mastodon applies the same for everyone, regardless of who is using it.
The Truth social network was also hacked ahead of its launch, which is not until sometime in the first quarter of 2022.
A very interesting Twitter thread shows more information revolving around Truth Social and how it’s already quite vulnerable.
Anyone can create an account on Trump's social network TRUTH Social using a publicly available link. I literally just registered "mikepence." The site hasn't even launched yet and it's already this vulnerable pic.twitter.com/v9nPN8ibDS
— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) October 21, 2021
Was just able to setup an account using the handle @donaldtrump on 'Truth Social,' former President Donald Trump's new social media website.
Although the site is not officially open, a URL was discovered allowing users to sign up anyway. pic.twitter.com/MRMQzjNhma
— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) October 21, 2021
The disgusting photograph can be seen in this tweet. I left that out on purpose.