Today we're sharing additional guidelines about our Trade Mark Policy based on community feedback that we received.
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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
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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.
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@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.
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@bugbear @hamatti Again, this is no fight on who's wrong and who's right from my point of view. I can understand the move, I'm also not too fond of it tbh. And I will see what my options are as an instance maintainer. Issues like what the UK launched last year (user identification) and what the EU is implementing more and more (e.g. chat control) worry me more as a public operator at this point
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@bugbear @hamatti Again, this is no fight on who's wrong and who's right from my point of view. I can understand the move, I'm also not too fond of it tbh. And I will see what my options are as an instance maintainer. Issues like what the UK launched last year (user identification) and what the EU is implementing more and more (e.g. chat control) worry me more as a public operator at this point
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@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.@xvilo Again, how is it protecting me? So far I've only heard how it's protecting the company (value of their brand). You said it's protecting everyone.
Yeah, funny how it's not affecting you at all and at the same time you are happy with the change and defending it. If they banned whisky tomorrow, I would be okay with it, too, I don't drink it. (Though I might miss whisky sauce, to be honest)
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@xvilo Again, how is it protecting me? So far I've only heard how it's protecting the company (value of their brand). You said it's protecting everyone.
Yeah, funny how it's not affecting you at all and at the same time you are happy with the change and defending it. If they banned whisky tomorrow, I would be okay with it, too, I don't drink it. (Though I might miss whisky sauce, to be honest)
@bugbear You're assuming a lot here.
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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 i think this is pretty bad
thats like if ubuntu could decide what specific computers you can install it on, and the manufacturer (be it a company or someone building his own pc) would need to ask canonical for permission to install their operating system in that computer
idk... but for an alternative to big tech, asking one big corporation for permission to use the name of the software it runs on really seems like the first step into becoming the next big tech to avoid
️ the company changes its mind. Read the guidelines you are defending so much!
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