Re: [libreplanet-discuss] [Libreplanet-sydney] Is Steemit Free/Libre?

[Aleksa Sarai]

> I was wondering if someone could confirm whether the crypto/blockchain based
> social network “steemit.com” is Free Software?
>
> Is this a recommended platform for Free Software folks?
>
> And d.tube is supposedly  a decentralised and blockchain based
> alternative/replacement for youtube.
> dtube is also connected to steemit.
>
> Is Dtube Free/Libre also? And does this community recommend it?

Both of those platforms (the websites and the blockchain miner code) are under
free software licenses, as far as I can tell[1,2,3]. It's not clear to me
whether these platforms would be correctly classified as a SaaSS though (which
would be a problem). While they clearly do something that a user cannot do
locally, I don't know whether any node has upload capabilities (the dtube
source appears to have an IPFS uploader, but the main side code doesn't appear
to have the logic for that).

Running your own (modified) version of the blockchain is a bit hard, but GPLv3
permits you to reject modified software from your network (so it's clearly
allowed by the FSF's definition of free software):

> Access to a network may be denied when the modification itself materially and
> adversely affects the operation of the network or violates the rules and
> protocols for communication across the network.

So as long as you could run your own modified version of the relevant programs,
then I would consider it to be "free software" under the strict definition of
the word.

I can't answer if the community would recommend it though. I personally find
the idea interesting, but am a little worried about the complexity of paying
out your funds (and it's not clear to me whether this logic is handled by the
company or by the blockchain nodes).

[1]: https://github.com/steemit/condenser (MIT License)
[2]: https://github.com/steemit/steem (MIT License)
[3]: https://github.com/dtube/production (GPL-3.0-only)

-- 
Aleksa Sarai (cyphar)
www.cyphar.com