Re: Minds.com

From: Michael McMahon <michael@fsf.org>
To: Valentino Giudice <valentino.giudice96@gmail.com>
Cc: libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
Subject: Re: Minds.com
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2023 14:26:49 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <bed79fc6-930e-e978-95e8-367a874e6754@fsf.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CANC0hWj2fnQfnUr0a8uFHNMzRQR0h5ML1d+nAqjEEckTH7qVmw@mail.gmail.com>

I didn't look into it that much, but what you said about licensing 
sounds right if true.

Software freedom is foundational. Freedom is dependent on having the 
ability to use free software. The message gets very muddy when people 
mistake the FSF for the Free Speech Foundation or any other sort of 
freedom not included in the four software freedoms.

I'm not interested in minds.com at all and will not promote any social 
media platform that would be categorized as a free speech zone. I would 
recommend several free software platforms in the fediverse which we 
already do.

Best,
Michael McMahon | Web Developer, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: 4337 2794 C8AD D5CA 8FCF  FA6C D037 59DA B600 E3C0
https://fsf.org

On 9/21/23 13:55, Valentino Giudice wrote:
>  >  Minds could be categorized as a "free speech zone" social network which
>  > are typically popular with fascists so count me out.
> 
> Fascism and freedom of speech are entirely incompatible and antithetical 
> to each other.
> It could be true that fascist today use free speech platforms, but it is 
> certainly not what they desire.
> 
>  From reading from the FSF/GNU websites, it has always been my 
> impression that freedom of speech is valued by the free software 
> community, in a way it certainly is not by fascists.
> Indeed, filtering what one reads and publicly writes through the erratic 
> whims of some corporation, typically guided by capitalist interests and 
> the need to applease advertisers, as it usually happens on most 
> platforms (such as X and Facebooks), implies restricting one's behavior 
> in a way akin to what proprietary software leads to.
> 
>  > The licensing of the minds project is also questionable.
> 
> Elgg dual-licenses the project, except plugins, under both the MIT 
> license and the GPL 2.
> Obviously, if someone uses the whole of Elgg, they effectively have to 
> use it under the GPL 2.
> 
> Now, I agree with the GitHub comment, on the Elgg issue, that you 
> referenced. Indeed, if Elgg is packaged with GPL-2.0 only plugins, it 
> must have the GPL-2.0-only license (as a package).
> However, the issue is specifically about the identifier of the license 
> for the whole package (for automated tools), which is not what is in 
> question here.
> 
> If someone uses Ellg without plugins, they can do so under the MIT 
> license, which is, of course, AGPL-compatible.
> 
> The project which is actually derived from Elgg is: 
> https://gitlab.com/minds/engine <https://gitlab.com/minds/engine>
> 
> Indeed, the situation wasn't clear to me at first, so I asked.
> Minds is using the portion of Elgg which is released under the MIT 
> license and is complying with the MIT license (in a way my dumb self 
> didn't notice because I looked everywhere except the LICENSE file, which 
> I assumed to be just the text of the AGPL): 
> https://gitlab.com/minds/engine/-/issues/2647 
> <https://gitlab.com/minds/engine/-/issues/2647>
> 
> I do have some issues with Minds, but as far as licensing is 
> concerned, in relation to Elgg, it seems fine with me.

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