So Gab has decided that their own code that they spent $5M of investor money developing is so unsalvageably bad that they're going to use Mastodon's code instead, with the added bonus of leeching off of our apps (with Gab apps being banned from app stores)
This is an early warning to fellow admins to be vigilant and domain-block them on sight, when/if they appear (unconfirmed whether they intend to federate), and to app devs to consider if blocking Gab's domains from their app is necessary.
One has to wonder if their investors feel ripped off about this... After all, there are more than 2,000 installations of Mastodon and the costs begin at $5/mo, not $5M
@lain It's true that my work isn't free, but Gab gets the results of my work for free, so their investors' money didn't go to the development of their platform (or did, but got wasted--bad either way)
filippo db 
@Gargron @lain i don’t see that bad, firstly our Toots will be available to all Gab users, About 850000 members so our instances can be a trojan horse inside gab. Also there’ll be a lot of publicity around mastodon, and probably a lot of media coverage about fediverse and mastodon creator that will condamn the use of its software, bla bla bla...
so a lot new instances will be created, some band but a lot good, and for sure fediverse will be a lot bigger
@filippodb @Gargron @lain I guess the concern will be the unsavory nature of much of Gab's content then being associated with Mastodon. I honestly tried to engage with folk on Gan once, sought to understand their beliefs & worries. The torrent of abuse I got followed me off Gab and onto twitter. It's a terrible community. I don't think they should be silenced (that's a whole different matter) but I get the concerns of reputational damage by association.
@wiredfire
I just want to say I wasn't up to date with all things concerning Gab, so thank you guys for having this conversation!
@filippodb @Gargron @lain