Fun fact about the license under which the Mastodon source code is published (AGPL) is that it requires any modifications to it to be published.
No secret sauce, no proprietary features possible. Which is why commercial companies hate this license.
Want to paywall "pro" features? You can, but anyone can take your code and run it on a different server for free.
Anyway, that's quite an interesting financial choice for Gab, a for-profit entity that sells "pro" features
Because Mastodon does not have a Copyright License Agreement (CLA) that contributors have to sign before submitting code, I am not the sole copyright holder of the Mastodon source code--rather, contributors keep rights to their parts. As such, violation of AGPLv3 is not just a violation of my own rights, but of all past contributors to Mastodon.
@Gargron Awesome! I've been wondering if anyone used the AGPL in practice. Good on you.
* Mastodon (as you noticed)
* GNU Ghostscript, IIUC almost the first software to use the AGPLv1
* Friendica, PeerTube, GNU Social, Diaspora
* Berkeley DB
* NextCloud
* MuPDF
* SugarCRM
* RethinkDB
* Redis Modules by Redis Labs before the 2018 license debacle
* MongoDB before the 2018 license debacle
@Gargron Where is Gab's source code published? It is mentioned in their Terms of Service, but I do not see any repository available online with the code...
@Gargron that's a slippery slope. Proprietary "pro" features are never good for open source projects.
@Gargron Yes, but then do something! You can… so well…
@Gargron in fact you can host Gab yourself and have all the pro, verified and sponsor badges
@Gargron hmm... AGPL doesn’t work if the SaaS product modifies Mastodon to, say, make an external request to a proprietary service. They’re obligated to release that modification, but not the service it calls out to. So, yeah, I am glad mastodon uses AGPL, but it’s not a panacea of protection.
@clacke @Gargron I am pretty sure that “external process munges database to add proprietary feature” is also totally possible, and likely a way around it. But yeah, you’re right. Maybe someone could argue that REST is just a distributed linker. Of course, the feature could be built to “link” against, say, a micro formats API, and the propriety one does more fancy...
@Gargron There are many, many freeloaders who will take anything that is seen as 'free' just because they can. If you make something 'free' but actually has some cost to you as the provider, you have to find some way of keeping the freeloaders out... If you can't keep them out, then (at any time) the commercial competition can freeload just to destroy you...
@Gargron for profit social media in general is destined to end up having the same issues as youtube and facebook. Trying to make money by pleasing advertisers and commercial entities etc.
especially once they become publicly traded companies
@Gargron
Taking the pro features and merging them into Mastodon would be the ultimate lol. (If they are worth it.)
forever 
@uncletrunks @jg @Gargron
Do this, but block every other instance from federating, except for freespeechextremists
@Gargron doesn't that imply it'll have to be re-implemented clean in the future anyways?
@kaniini @Gargron Actually, that was the problem Christoph Hellwig had in its attempt to sue VMware: The German court wasn't willing to believe Hellwig had created a significant part of the Linux kernel.
hear: http://faif.us/cast/2019/apr/22/0x66/
read: https://www.golem.de/news/gpl-klage-klage-von-hellwig-gegen-vmware-erneut-abgewiesen-1903-139733.html
