Glad to be here. As a bit of noob, is there a multi-column layout available here? Or a way to see the feed of everyone on this instance? Right now, all I see is my own profile, which is rather bare since I haven't posted yet. ;
I’ve been running Mastodon for about 1 year & just upgraded my software to Pleroma/Elixir on October 17th because of inherent weaknesses in Ruby on Rails that powers Mastodon (ROR doesn’t scale well on large instances due to high numbers of dependencies, ROR was not built for performance & is headed to obsolescence in the Programming Community).
Only problem is that the creator of “Mastodon,” Eugen Rochko noticed that Mastodon.tech had switched to Pleroma & he’s private messaged me his displeasure unless I abandon my domain. You can see our public back & forth here: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109177601618496744
My primary reason is to try to maintain consistency for my users & myself who are already known at the Mastodon.tech & using that address.
It’s not right that someone can tell you what software you must run on your domain which I don’t charge users or make money from.
I work with Trademarks in the USA so it was easy to look up that Eugen Rochko was bluffing & doesn’t have a US Trademark on “Mastodon.” He has a German Trademark which carries no weight in the USA (I know this 1st hand because I hold a UK Trademark that doesn’t help me in the USA).
To be infringing I would have had to create a competing software, call it “Mastodon” & be making money from it.
Fair point but Eugen Rochko can’t have it both ways.
Remember that Eugen has been waging a campaign since 2016 to rename the “Fediverse” to, the “Mastodon Network.” And he’s won, 99.99% of news coverage refers to the entire Fediverse as the “Mastodon Network.” His campaign has been so successful, even the founders of other Fediverse software troll Eugen and the “Mastodon Network” (see picture below).
There are consequences when you succeed in getting your trade name to become the generic name for the entire Fediverse, you lose your protection like the many examples below:
Aspirin -
Still a Bayer trademark name for acetylsalicylic acid in about 80 countries, including Canada and many countries in Europe, but declared generic in the U.S.
Cellophane -
Still a registered trademark of Innovia Films Ltd in Europe and many other jurisdictions. Genericized in the U.S. Originally a trademark of DuPont.[3][4] A thin, transparent sheet made of regenerated cellulose.
Dry ice -
Trademarked by the Dry Ice Corporation of America in 1925. A solid form of carbon dioxide.
Escalator
Originally a trademark of Otis Elevator Company and it was a registered trademark until 1950.
Flip phone
Originally a trademark of Motorola.
Heroin
Trademarked by Friedrich Bayer & Co in 1898. Trademark lost in some nations in the Treaty of Versailles, in 1919.
Hovercraft
Trademarked by Saunders-Roe.
Kerosene
First used around 1852.
Lanolin
Trademarked as the term for a preparation of water and the wax from sheep’s wool.
Launderette
Coin laundry shop.[15] Telecoin-Bendix trademark, for coin laundries of Telecoin-adapted Bendix machines.
Laundromat
Linoleum
Mimeograph
Originally trademarked by Albert Dick.[19] A low-cost printing press that works by forcing ink through a stencil.
Scotch Tape came to be used in Canada, France, Italy and the United States, in referring to any brand of clear adhesive tape.
Teleprompter
The word TelePrompTer, with internal capitalization, originated in the 1950s as a trade name used by the TelePrompTer Corporation, for their television prompting apparatus.
Trampoline
Originally a trademark of the Griswold-Nissen Trampoline & Tumbling Company.
Videotape
Originally trademarked by Ampex Corporation,an early manufacturer of audio and video tape recorders.
My views carry precisely zero weight but, trade mark shenanigans aside, I can see why the lead developers of a project might be a bit irked if someone used a domain bearing their project's name, for something identical but using different software, even if the rationale - continuity for users - makes perfect sense.
Fair point but Eugen Rochko can't have it both ways.
Remember that Eugen has been waging a campaign since 2016 to rename the "Fediverse" to, the "Mastodon Network." And he's won, 99.99% of news coverage refers to the entire Fediverse as the "Mastodon Network." His campaign has been so successful, even the founders of other Fediverse software like Pleroma's founder @lain troll Eugen and the "Mastodon Network" (see picture below).
There are consequences when you succeed in getting your trade name to become the generic name for the entire Fediverse, you lose your protection like the many examples below:
1) Aspirin - Still a Bayer trademark name for acetylsalicylic acid in about 80 countries, including Canada and many countries in Europe, but declared generic in the U.S.
2) Cellophane - Still a registered trademark of Innovia Films Ltd in Europe and many other jurisdictions. Genericized in the U.S. Originally a trademark of DuPont.[3][4] A thin, transparent sheet made of regenerated cellulose.
3) Dry ice - Trademarked by the Dry Ice Corporation of America in 1925. A solid form of carbon dioxide.
4) Escalator Originally a trademark of Otis Elevator Company and it was a registered trademark until 1950.
5) Flip phone Originally a trademark of Motorola.
6) Heroin Trademarked by Friedrich Bayer & Co in 1898. Trademark lost in some nations in the Treaty of Versailles, in 1919.
7) Hovercraft Trademarked by Saunders-Roe.
8) Kerosene First used around 1852.
9) Lanolin Trademarked as the term for a preparation of water and the wax from sheep's wool.
10) Launderette Coin laundry shop.[15] Telecoin-Bendix trademark, for coin laundries of Telecoin-adapted Bendix machines. Laundromat
11) Linoleum
12) Mimeograph Originally trademarked by Albert Dick.[19] A low-cost printing press that works by forcing ink through a stencil.
12) Scotch Tape came to be used in Canada, France, Italy and the United States, in referring to any brand of clear adhesive tape.
13) Teleprompter The word TelePrompTer, with internal capitalization, originated in the 1950s as a trade name used by the TelePrompTer Corporation, for their television prompting apparatus.
14) Trampoline Originally a trademark of the Griswold-Nissen Trampoline & Tumbling Company.
15) Videotape Originally trademarked by Ampex Corporation,an early manufacturer of audio and video tape recorders.
The below image is what I forgot to post above where the founder of Pleroma, Lain, trolls Eugen Rochko for exclusively pushing “Mastodon Network” as the generic name for the Fediverse.
Absolutely - most orgs want to avoid genericisation of their important marks.
I don't know enough of the detail to comment on your "waging a campaign" point, and whether it is a case of someone wanting their software to be successful and dominant in its field, versus wanting all other software doing the same thing to use the same term.
Its a bit like people who make "fanart" of something and use the known brands and names as a way to get more attention sort of thing.
In this case its a little different as mastodon is more a synonym to federated social media especially to twitter like branches.
I´d say its not a legal thing at all but I understand him a little too. It also helps to know beforehand that a different kind of software is running.
Everything that is similar to mastodon should been given the rights to fair use the term "mastodon" as it helps to simplify things and not totally fragment everything.
It’s a free world my friend & you should choose what makes you satisfied.
Ruby on Rails is approaching obsolescence as a language, it’s #Mastodon powered by Ruby that will have to change, not Pleroma. Elixir is a newer and faster/more efficient language. Pleroma is here to stay as it has 3 healthy forks now with more features than Mastodon. For example, some of the things in #Rebased I don’t believe are in Mastodon:
Quote posts
Birthdays
YouTube embeds
webhooks
Mastodon Admin API
bug fixes
full text searches
Since 2006 Symbol of Trust LLC has been in the Technology social media sector with our forum of over 3.7 million registered users:
https://HostBoards.com/
Mastodon.tech is our newest venture, but at 16 years-old, Symbol of Trust is here to stay.
@admin I can't really comment on the legal/trademark perspective, but for me, I only became aware of the fediverse due to Mastodon. Not many are aware that Mastodon is just one implementation of a spec in a larger network, and in some regards that shouldn't matter.
However I honestly probably wouldn't have joined mastodon.tech (which I found via joinmastodon.org) if I had realized that it isn't actually a Mastodon instance per se, as even though it's the same ActivityPub base, I don't think feature parity is/can be guaranteed. And whenever it's brought to my attention that I'm actually on Pleroma and not Mastodon, which is not only when I see posts like this but also everytime I notice the instance in an account's profile, I wonder just a bit if all the features I read up on for Mastodon are available to me here, and if this will be the case years down the line. I also think about long-term instance persistence in general and how a reoccurence of mastodon.technology can be avoided/mitigated without having to host my own instance, but that's another matter. There's just this strange disconnect for me in being at mastodon.tech, but it not actually being Mastodon when that's what I - thought I - signed up for.