Today we're sharing additional guidelines about our Trade Mark Policy based on community feedback that we received.
-
@xvilo @hamatti 1) I hope you delete your server soon. Not that you have to (it was created before the stated date), but to protect Mastodon's trademark.
2) No, it's like Oracle owning trademark for JavaScript. It's silly, it's pointless, it puts people in an awkward position if Oracle suddenly decided they wanna go aggressively after people using JavaScript instead of ECMAScript. Another good example nginx decided tomorrow that you need to put disclaimer on your web servers to avoid confusion.
@bugbear @hamatti But then again, we are ON activity pub, existing servers have been thought of, and then we have people crying and complaining without any real message here, and then, when asked, blocking the 'annoying' person of course. Sure, having ActivityPub blocked, or not having thought about existing cases would have been an issue. But this is not so much, It's for everyone's protection in the end. 1/2
-
-
Today we're sharing additional guidelines about our Trade Mark Policy based on community feedback that we received.
The new guidelines, and more background about these changes, are available on our blog:
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/08/sharing-guidelines-about-mastodons-trade-mark-policy/#Mastodon #Fediverse #SocialWeb #FediDev #MastoDev #FediAdmin #MastoAdmin
@Mastodon@mastodon.social please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this prohibit the use of names like "The Such-and-such Community Mastodon", which is actually really common for groups and organizations that host a bunch of different services for their members? There's also a number of groups that name their hosted services like "The X on Y", meaning that "The X on Mastodon" shows up rather often as a legitimate usage.
-
@bugbear @hamatti But then again, we are ON activity pub, existing servers have been thought of, and then we have people crying and complaining without any real message here, and then, when asked, blocking the 'annoying' person of course. Sure, having ActivityPub blocked, or not having thought about existing cases would have been an issue. But this is not so much, It's for everyone's protection in the end. 1/2
-
-
Today we're sharing additional guidelines about our Trade Mark Policy based on community feedback that we received.
The new guidelines, and more background about these changes, are available on our blog:
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/08/sharing-guidelines-about-mastodons-trade-mark-policy/#Mastodon #Fediverse #SocialWeb #FediDev #MastoDev #FediAdmin #MastoAdmin
@Mastodon@mastodon.social as a genuine question - have y'all considered renaming Mastodon (the software) to entirely avoid the trademark collision with Mastodon (the company) and Mastodon (the instance)?
-
@bugbear @hamatti But then again, we are ON activity pub, existing servers have been thought of, and then we have people crying and complaining without any real message here, and then, when asked, blocking the 'annoying' person of course. Sure, having ActivityPub blocked, or not having thought about existing cases would have been an issue. But this is not so much, It's for everyone's protection in the end. 1/2
-
@xvilo and you better pick one that uses Mastodon API as that's becoming a de facto standard. You want clients to be able to communicate with your server, right?
Mastodon
️the company positioned their software Mastodon️ to be the centre of fediverse. Now they're crying that people actually use it and advertise using it.And yes, if I ever run my own server again, I am gonna use different software. Not over this issue, but because I don't want to buy a data centre just so I have enough resources on my server to see my Internet friends' cat pictures.
-
@xvilo @bugbear Sure. I do like Mastodon and I wish for more adoption of it. That's why I'm arguing that this is a bad policy.
Do you wish more people would run Mastodon servers? If yes, do you think that Mastodon's trademark policy is likely to increase that and make it clearer for the user to understand?
-
@xvilo I admit writing your own ActivityPub server is much easier than forking Linux, but why the same attitude as Linus Torvalds' meltdown over AI pushback?
The fact is that most people out there aren't going to write their own software (I really enjoy seeing projects from people who are writing their own ActivityPub servers, though. The diversity is a good thing), they're gonna use what's out there already. And most people from that group will use hosted solutions which are disproportionately using Mastodon
️, so regular people don't have that many options to use whatever they'd like.Not mentioning writing my own server software is once again irrelevant to what we're arguing about.
-
-
I believe that if users of Mastodon talk about it to their friend and encourage them to join and it becomes harder to find Mastodon servers because of the trademark restrictions, it will decrease the user adoption.
If everyone has to use different name and logo for the service they provide, I think it's going to be detriment to adoption.
-
@xvilo I admit writing your own ActivityPub server is much easier than forking Linux, but why the same attitude as Linus Torvalds' meltdown over AI pushback?
The fact is that most people out there aren't going to write their own software (I really enjoy seeing projects from people who are writing their own ActivityPub servers, though. The diversity is a good thing), they're gonna use what's out there already. And most people from that group will use hosted solutions which are disproportionately using Mastodon
️, so regular people don't have that many options to use whatever they'd like.Not mentioning writing my own server software is once again irrelevant to what we're arguing about.
@bugbear I think you should compare it to email. Through out the years we've seen different clients, protocols and and hosters. They all implement email as a spec. I think we need to look at it that way. I can migrate away from gmail to any other provider, and still be in touch with the world that access to email
-
I believe that if users of Mastodon talk about it to their friend and encourage them to join and it becomes harder to find Mastodon servers because of the trademark restrictions, it will decrease the user adoption.
If everyone has to use different name and logo for the service they provide, I think it's going to be detriment to adoption.
@hamatti @bugbear I'm replying to two people at once, but I think this applies here too https://mastodon.org.uk/@xvilo/117093818441050722
-
I believe that if users of Mastodon talk about it to their friend and encourage them to join and it becomes harder to find Mastodon servers because of the trademark restrictions, it will decrease the user adoption.
If everyone has to use different name and logo for the service they provide, I think it's going to be detriment to adoption.
-
-
@xvilo how is it protecting me? Serious answers only.
@bugbear Disclaimer: I'm nowhere near an expert on the field. But from what I know:
- It protects the users. What says 'mastodon' is 'mastodon' as an org. If it isn't (e.g. impersonation), there is a legal takedown path. You can still run the mastodon software, just not anymore on a domain like mine, however, that's exempt from this policy. -
@bugbear I think you should compare it to email. Through out the years we've seen different clients, protocols and and hosters. They all implement email as a spec. I think we need to look at it that way. I can migrate away from gmail to any other provider, and still be in touch with the world that access to email
@xvilo yes, because email has been around for ages. People know it.
Again, GMail is a closed source service. No one else is running GMail software. Not the same.
But since you like to bring up Google products so much, GTalk effectively killed wide adoption of XMPP (or as many people still call it, Jabber. See how it can get confusing?). Many people didn't even know they were using XMPP when chatting away on GTalk so when GTalk was cancelled (like almost every other Google service with the exemption of their search and GMail itself), people didn't know they could just move away to hundred of other servers and continue to use the same underlying technology.
Facebook did even better, they just stopped supporting XMPP and kept all the users using their Messenger and cut off everyone on XMPP servers.
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login