The current chaos in WordPress caused by Matt seems like a good time to remind folks that the Mastodon “community” websites and trademarks are 100% owned by one man, despite pleas from current and former project members to make Mastodon a foundation wi...
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The current chaos in WordPress caused by Matt seems like a good time to remind folks that the Mastodon “community” websites and trademarks are 100% owned by one man, despite pleas from current and former project members to make Mastodon a foundation with a board.
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@avdi and the “Rails foundation” neither owns the trademark (it is “on loan” from Dave) nor helps manage development nor governance.
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@avdi Considering that Mastodon just partnered with Meta on https://socialwebfoundation.org , this is prescient AF.
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@avdi Sure, but let's be honest about the steps that have been taken as well.
Mastodon now a non-profit organisation
In June, I was able to officially register Mastodon gGmbH after nearly 8 months of legal work (“gGmbH” means “non-profit limited liability company”). A non-profit limited liability company in Germany is structered and operates similarly to a for-profit limited liability company with a few key differences. The founding document of the company is written such that the activity of the company is working towards goals that benefit the public; the shareholders may not receive any revenue from the company’s activities and can at most withdraw the funds that they originally paid in; employees may not receive extraordinarily high wages; and the company can receive donations which are then tax-free, although any other income that does not fit the definition of a donation continues to incur various taxes.
Mastodon Blog (blog.joinmastodon.org)
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@avdi sorry , I am not at all at tech person
I get there is a problem, but I don't see how the solution is implemented ?if the owner of mastodon refuses, what are the options ?
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@avdi I think one of the worst things to come out of the Twitter exodus was everyone thinking Mastodon *was* the Fediverse, and big instances are the way to go.
Still hoping some other #Fediverse platforms emerge that are operationally sane to deploy & maintain.
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@failedLyndonLaRouchite @avdi whether they refuse in the interim doesn't change that it probably should happen at some point.
if mastodon's ownership is transferred to a foundation, if the primary maintainer says no, the foundation either negotiates with them, or gets a new primary maintainer.
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@risottobias @avdi sorry for being dense
who is this owner ?
and if they are an owner, then they have to agree to a change, and they may not do that and then what ? -
@failedLyndonLaRouchite @avdi of the trademark? eugene probably.
they shouldn't be the owner.
that's weird to have the trademark owned by someone and the foundation supposedly being "independent"
it should be fully separated. instead of a similar wordpress nonsense.
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@avdi does Mastodon GmbH or the US wing they just started not own the trademark and joinmastodon.org?
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@blake @avdi this https://joinmastodon.org/trademark still lists the GmbH as the owner, are we sure that it actually died? I knew they were having issues with their non-profit status but I didn't hear that it "died"
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@avdi A foundation like the Mozilla Foundation that also couldn't care less about what the users want?
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Monospace Mentorreplied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by
@jwildeboer What is it about Mastodon that makes people go "Let's respond with the worst take I can think of"? @avdi
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Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:replied to Monospace Mentor last edited by
@monospace What I tried to say is that "Let's have a foundation" is not the good idea many people think it is. Just because you have a foundation doesn't mean everything becomes altruistic all of a sudden. @Gargron has found an IMHO very good way to keep Mastodon sustainable. To suspect him of going Mullenweg is ridiculous IMHO. @avdi
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Yep. I'm working on a follow-on to https://privacy.thenexus.today/swf-and-the-meta-elephant/ that focuses on transparency and SWF and one of the points I'm going to make is that Mastodon gGmbH also needs to be be a lot more transparent. Very few people I talk to know about the actual ownership situation.
@[email protected] @[email protected] -
My understanding is that Mastodon GmbH (or gGmbH?) owns the trademark (etc), Eugen's the owner of Mastodon GmbH, and the US wing has no ownership or governance relationship to Mastodon GmbH (or at least didn't in the spring, when they were launched). But that's just my understanding, I don't know of definitive public sources for most of this.
@[email protected] @[email protected] -
@jdp23 @avdi I think it is indeed really important to think through these types of things and acknowledge how much power individuals "own" in this project here we are building. Especially watching certain tech ceos of predominant opensource projects take really drastic moves to show off their personal power
