#mastoadmins opinions on this new trademark policy - https://joinmastodon.org/trademark mentions the use of "mastodon" in domain names isn't permitted... 😕
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.
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.
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.
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.