The whole policy is just legalese and decently antithetical to open-source social media. If we see John Mastodon start to go after server owners for using the name mastodon.whatever , the integrity of the Mastodon community (and to a point the whole fediverse) is at risk.
Yeah, it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens with existing instances that already use it.
While I don’t agree that restricting the use of a mark is antiethical to open-source social media - Mozilla’s is similar (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/trademarks/policy/)… The Linux Foundation is a little more open about the use of the word Linux in domains and other things.
A good read on why one should trademark open source software: https://lightmeter.io/why-trademark-open-source-software/
Another one from the Linux Foundation: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/open-source-communities-and-trademarks-a-reprise
I doubt that Mastodon GmbH will chase down the owners and operators of instances like mastodon.au (who is the @mb above) unless they start acting in ways that a detrimental to the brand or in some way becomes a problem. The Mastodon GmbH folks have enough to do without putting well meaning folks who established before this policy in their sights, in fact I don’t think we’ll see any action on this for now.
Thanks for this one too! Added to the headlines, will follow it and reach out to Michael if anything comes of it!
