I feel like this is being blown way out of proportion. Mastodon is open source under the AGPL. Hiveway’s fork immediately changed all intellectual property (the logo, the name) because I would assume those are trademarked (see Firefox forks: Iceweasel, Waterfox, etc).
Forking an open source project to make your own is par for the course. As long as the project gets licensed under the AGPL, I see absolutely no problem with this.
I think the bigger issue here is how far the Hiveway people have gone to ensure that all connection with the original Mastodon project, including the authorship of individual commits, was removed. Does that violate the AGPL? I have no idea, IANAL etc, though I suspect it does. But, even if it doesn’t, that is a deeply shitty thing to do.
including the authorship of individual commits, was removed.
If that’s the case, then this is the part that should be highlighted. I, too, would question how the AGPL would affect this. IANAL either, but I think that removal of the .git directory from a fork would be an interesting topic of discussion for AGPL cohesion. Personally, I believe that since it’s part of the project and just a bunch of files, it’d be completely valid to remove it as long as you keep previous attribution to the parent project - otherwise removing any arbitrary files from the project could be a potential violation.
EDIT: of course after typing up this comment I realize that removing a LICENSE/COPYING file and all attribution of the previous license would also be a violation. Hmmmm, this is definitely not simple.
I still don’t see how this is shitty. If you’re going to put your source code on the web with a license to copy it, then you absolutely must expect someone to take it and make it their own. I personally see them removing indication of Mastodon as a way of keeping themselves away from legal trouble involving trademarks.
Intercal is right. It’s eye-roll inducing for sure, like of course some ico-idiot is going to make a quick buck off of mastodon, but who cares? The investors are the ones getting scammed. And they’re the ones not paying attention anyway.
I’m not sure that seeing what is basically fork drama here is great. This is basically free press for Hiveway.
It would have been nice to maybe a deeper exploration of AGPL issues or something other than just breathless irritation.
No issues with AGPL …. yet.
https://github.com/hiveway/hiveway/commit/7d030dc84ed83e34b13cda56273f658b19fcbf78
I feel like this is being blown way out of proportion. Mastodon is open source under the AGPL. Hiveway’s fork immediately changed all intellectual property (the logo, the name) because I would assume those are trademarked (see Firefox forks: Iceweasel, Waterfox, etc).
Forking an open source project to make your own is par for the course. As long as the project gets licensed under the AGPL, I see absolutely no problem with this.
I think the bigger issue here is how far the Hiveway people have gone to ensure that all connection with the original Mastodon project, including the authorship of individual commits, was removed. Does that violate the AGPL? I have no idea, IANAL etc, though I suspect it does. But, even if it doesn’t, that is a deeply shitty thing to do.
If that’s the case, then this is the part that should be highlighted. I, too, would question how the AGPL would affect this. IANAL either, but I think that removal of the
.gitdirectory from a fork would be an interesting topic of discussion for AGPL cohesion. Personally, I believe that since it’s part of the project and just a bunch of files, it’d be completely valid to remove it as long as you keep previous attribution to the parent project - otherwise removing any arbitrary files from the project could be a potential violation.EDIT: of course after typing up this comment I realize that removing a LICENSE/COPYING file and all attribution of the previous license would also be a violation. Hmmmm, this is definitely not simple.
Just because it’s technically legal doesn’t mean it’s not a shitty thing to do.
I still don’t see how this is shitty. If you’re going to put your source code on the web with a license to copy it, then you absolutely must expect someone to take it and make it their own. I personally see them removing indication of Mastodon as a way of keeping themselves away from legal trouble involving trademarks.
Intercal is right. It’s eye-roll inducing for sure, like of course some ico-idiot is going to make a quick buck off of mastodon, but who cares? The investors are the ones getting scammed. And they’re the ones not paying attention anyway.