
Hiveway.io rips off of Mastodon and slaps a blockchain on top - DeadSuperHero
https://medium.com/we-distribute/hiveway-io-shamelessly-rips-off-of-mastodon-and-slaps-a-blockchain-on-top-for-some-reason-57b7aba3e84f
======
ColinWright
From
[https://github.com/hiveway/hiveway/blob/master/COPYRIGHT](https://github.com/hiveway/hiveway/blob/master/COPYRIGHT)

    
    
      The Hiveway source code is forked from Mastodon
      (https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon)
    
      Hiveway currently has the following differences over Mastodon:
    
      - Ethereum Blockchain integration
      - UI was redesigned to be more friendly and with less items
      - There is no Federated Timeline
      - Mastodon branding replaced with Hiveway branding
    

Link via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16516563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16516563)

~~~
DeadSuperHero
Thanks for linking this; unfortunately it doesn't exactly do a whole lot for
this project or how its PR is posturing things.

~~~
UncleEntity
It does, in fact, refute the "rips off" claim.

Section 5: a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified
it, and giving a relevant date.

And a (summary) reading of the license has no mention that retaining branding
is required for "Conveying Modified Source Versions" and is probably a
copyright violation if they did it.

The only thing I really see they did "wrong" is pulling commits without
retaining the original committers ID and I'm not even sure that's even against
the AGPL since that information would be lost if they distributed the sources
as a tarball (which is perfectly fine).

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rainbowmverse
The fact that its timeline is mainly showing toots from Mastodon and other
AP/GNUSocial instances tells me this fancy blockchain moderation is not as
robust as they think.

~~~
Miredly
From what I've seen, no one involved really cares about how robust it is. It's
a crypto-bandwagon cash grab.

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ocdtrekkie
I'm not super opposed. If it ends up bringing people into the fediverse, if
it's still possible to follow people on different apps and platforms, why not?
I don't have any big issue with participants in the space that have business
models.

And of course, open source is meant to be forked, I don't see the need to call
it a "rip off". As far as a changing the branding, that's practically required
generally if you want to make a fork and not step on someone's
brand/trademark.

~~~
UncleEntity
Yeah, the whole IceWeasel/Firefox thing.

As far as "rewriting history" (giving them the benefit of doubt) I'd say
they're cherrypicking patches that apply cleanly and modifying ones that don't
just under their own git user ID instead of doing some git merge magic to
ensure the original committer's ID is retained.

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mankash666
Calling bullshit on this accusatory article. Source code [1] clearly states
and attributes credit/copyright to Mastadon. They seem to be fully compliant
with the licensing requirements.

[1]:
[https://github.com/hiveway/hiveway/blob/master/COPYRIGHT](https://github.com/hiveway/hiveway/blob/master/COPYRIGHT)

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daveid
Is this submission flagged off the frontpage?

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IntronExon
My first thought was just... who would have the combination of arrogance and
poor judgment to do this, while still being able to actually do it?

 _The Hiveway platform raised more than a few eyebrows today with an
announcement by none other than John McAfee..._

Oh. I suppose once you’ve fried your brains on designer bath salts and
murdered a neighbor, ripping off something like Mastadon for profit doesn’t
even register.

