blaine
With posts like this, it's becoming really clear and important that we disentangle "the Fediverse" from "Mastodon."
@Gargron, you've done great work that we're all grateful for, but you're standing on the shoulders of many, many others that you rarely credit or acknowledge.
This attitude isn't what we built the fediverse for. ?
Eugen Rochko
@blaine See thread: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/110130251661383127
blaine
@Gargron I think your replies there are not great. ?
You and Mastodon GmBH benefit massively from the immense amount of work that the wider fediverse community does.
While I appreciate the perspective that the software != the community, I respectfully disagree. The decisions for the software impact the community, as we heard so profoundly at the Black Twitter Summit. The concern I have is that you often conflate the software and the community when it suits, but reject it when it doesn't.
blaine
@Gargron like it or not, "Mastodon" isn't just "Mastodon GmbH" or even just the software – it refers to the Fediverse in common usage. That's a tension that's not going away, and I profoundly worry about the your suggestion (understandable, at some level) that your org will exert control over what does and does not constitute "Mastodon."
Eugen Rochko
@blaine I will have to maintain that Mastodon refers to the Mastodon software, or that part of the fediverse that is running on the Mastodon software, and cannot and should not be used as a synonym for the fediverse overall. But this isn't what the thread was about at all.
blaine
@Gargron in that case, we agree! ?
fwiw, I'm not concerned about the thread – it was specifically the statement around the Mastodon copyright.
I think it'd be really helpful to figure out a way to build that narrative can hold that distinction.
Eugen Rochko
@blaine Which statement about copyright are you referring to?
blaine
@Gargron sorry, I misspoke - I meant trademark. It's possible you didn't mean to imply this, but "you are benefitting from the recognition of our trademark ... you can develop your own social media platform from scratch and participate in the fediverse that way" seems to suggest that "if you don't like our decisions, do your own thing, but don't call it Mastodon."
If that's not a fair assessment, I'd be greatly relieved.
Eugen Rochko
@blaine That's a very far cry from what my message said. I must assume you haven't read the thread I linked. I was responding to someone claiming they felt like an unpaid SRE for our organisation because there weren't enough customization options built into the software. I pointed out that they run a commercial service on top of it, and benefit from the recognition and goodwill of our brand.
blaine
@Gargron I believe you that it was a far cry from what you intended. ?
The BDFL approach is complicating in these scenarios, because in social settings "benevolence" to one is "hostile" to another.
I think @swetland's point gets to the root of this: https://chaos.social/@swetland/110130547164629389
It's absolutely fine for one person to have a strong view of what "Mastodon, the software" is, but anyone dictating what the Fediverse is anathema to us all. It gets messy when "Mastodon" is used for "the Fediverse."
Eugen Rochko
@peepstein @blaine I am not aware of anyone who is using "Mastodon" to refer to the fediverse. When somebody says "join Mastodon", I have not seen a single case where what they actually meant was "sign up on Pixelfed or Pleroma". Mastodon is a platform that is part of the fediverse but is distinct by its software.
Ed
@blaine @Gargron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark
Ed
@Gargron @blaine you don’t get to control that. Mastodon has become like “Kleenex” instead of “facial tissue” and it is very possible that it a court of competent jurisdiction takes away some of your rights to control how “Mastodon” is used. If enough people do use the term “Mastodon” to mean to “Fediverse”, eventually you will lose your trademark rights.
blaine
@Gargron @peepstein this is very far from my experience.
e.g., I've had many conversations with journalists who equate the fediverse with Mastodon, and most laypeople who have heard of Mastodon don't know what the fediverse is, but understand "mastodon" to refer to the thing I understand "the fediverse" to be.
Eugen Rochko
@blaine @peepstein If they don't know what the fediverse is, how could they be referring to it? It seems like the disparity comes from your own understanding. If I ask "How many MAU are there on Pixelfed?", I am not asking about a specific Pixelfed server, nor am I asking about the fediverse overall. Why should it be different for Mastodon?
blaine
@Gargron @peepstein when people who don't know about "the fediverse" refer to "mastodon", they mean "a decentralized alternative to twitter" – which is what you and I know as the fediverse.
They're *not* specifically referring to "Mastodon, a software project written in Ruby on Rails that interoperates with a wider network of other software that we've never heard of"
Eugen Rochko
@blaine @peepstein Mastodon is a decentralized alternative to Twitter. So is the fediverse. But the fediverse is a blurry concept with no clear lines and no clear UX expectations. PeerTube isn't an alternative to Twitter. When you're referring to Mastodon, you're referring to a specific UX that comes with the software.
blaine
@Gargron @peepstein my heartfelt opinion is that that perspective is stifling to the other possibilities presented by the fediverse. ?
Mastodon is the, err, elephant in the room. I sincerely believe that we'll all be better off with more diversity, and right now the terminology is a real barrier to that, for everyone involved.
Eugen Rochko
@blaine @jaredwhite @peepstein I'm disappointed your OP is still up even though it has nothing to do with trademark control, forks, or the fediverse, and is an out of context screenshot of a targeted reply to someone specific as explained in the linked thread.
blaine
@jaredwhite @peepstein @Gargron I think the point is that it doesn't matter what any of us think if common usage overrides our intent or understanding.
All that matters is that we correctly assess how terms are used and understood, and work from that basis.
My OP was calling out the need to disentangle "Mastodon" from "the Fediverse" if (and only if) the intent of Mastodon GmbH was to assert trademark control against "non-conformant" forks (or, indeed, non-derived fediverse software).
Jared White
@peepstein @blaine @Gargron I don't agree with any of that. Mastodon is Mastodon. Everyone in the know, knows exactly what that is, and those who don't can be educated accordingly. I've already gone through this entire conversation with regard to the term "podcast" (no, it does not mean "any audio show on the internet"!)
It's really quite dangerous to repurpose technical terms to mean what they are not. HTML is not any markup, it's a very specific type of markup. Markdown is not Textile. etc.
Ed
@blaine @Gargron I don’t think you realize the minefield here. Remember a few facts: APIs cannot be copyrighted, a federation of computers on the public internet is not an own-able thing, and an organization has to be extremely deliberate in order to avoid a name becoming a generic trademark. “Linux” is not Debian nor SUSE nor RedHat, but all of those things are definitely Linux. So good luck with Mastodon, it’s probably a lost cause.
blaine
@Gargron @jaredwhite @peepstein removed. I'm not looking for an argument over miscommunications. ?
I do think the trademark issue is real, and disagree with your assessment that people understand the difference between "Mastodon" and "the Fediverse"; you have a lot of power in this space, and your words carry a lot of weight.
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