Gregory's Server
 12 comments
 @Gargron like it or not, "Mastodon" isn't just "Mastodon GmbH" or even just the software ā it refers to the Fediverse in common usage. That's a tension that's not going away, and I profoundly worry about the your suggestion (understandable, at some level) that your org will exert control over what does and does not constitute "Mastodon." @blaine I will have to maintain that Mastodon refers to the Mastodon software, or that part of the fediverse that is running on the Mastodon software, and cannot and should not be used as a synonym for the fediverse overall. But this isn't what the thread was about at all. @Gargron @blaine you donāt get to control that. Mastodon has become like āKleenexā instead of āfacial tissueā and it is very possible that it a court of competent jurisdiction takes away some of your rights to control how āMastodonā is used. If enough people do use the term āMastodonā to mean to āFediverseā, eventually you will lose your trademark rights. @peepstein @blaine I am not aware of anyone who is using "Mastodon" to refer to the fediverse. When somebody says "join Mastodon", I have not seen a single case where what they actually meant was "sign up on Pixelfed or Pleroma". Mastodon is a platform that is part of the fediverse but is distinct by its software.  Really Eugen? Your interview with Time Magazine notwithstanding? That was IMO, a grave error on your part - conflating mastodon with #Fediverse and without one single utterance of the word "Fediverse" throughout. It served to cause much of this confusion on the part of n00bs and as a result, now jeopardizes your trademark. Fact: There's no such thing as a mastodon network. Only the #ActivityPub powered Fediverse āµ . @tallship @Gargron @peepstein @blaine Of course, the "Fediverse" (whatever that is, exactly) is not just powered by ActivityPub. For example, there is Diaspora, Matrix, Nostr, Zot, and so on. Of the part that is powered by some variant of ActivityPub, Mastodon has about 84% marketshare according to the statistics gatherers. That may be why it's so easy to conflate the two? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_protocols_for_distributed_social_networking The @Mastodon and #Fediverse confusion is partly due to the fact that Mastodon only supports the Server-Server aspect of #ActivityPub while using its own #API for Client-Server interactions. Net effect, it has the lions share of clients generally perceived as Fediverse clients -- which is a strategic point of vulnerability over the longterm, IMHO. @kidehen @Mastodon @tallship @Gargron @peepstein @blaine @atomicpoet Interesting point. If the "Fediverse" is about federation then the S2S aspect of #ActivityPub enables that federation, not the AP C2S part (which doesn't even require a federated server). For that reason, I think clients using the Mastodon C2S API are actually Fediverse clients (among others). If you'd like a challenging exercise, try defining the full Mastodon C2S API using the AP C2S spec (including event streaming, etc.) Yes, Server-Server (#S2S) is handling the federation aspect, but it gets tripped up in the broader sense of loose-coupling of clients and servers which is quite important. The #Fediverse benefits from clients with rich #UI/#UX available to all #ActivityPub servers rather than just @Mastodon -- especially if that's kinda forced via its platform-specific #API. This concern is from experience re #SocialMedia platform dynamics š |
@Gargron I think your replies there are not great. š¢
You and Mastodon GmbH benefit massively from the immense amount of work that the wider fediverse community does.
While I appreciate the perspective that the software != the community, I respectfully disagree. The decisions for the software impact the community, as we heard so profoundly at the Black Twitter Summit. The concern I have is that you often conflate the software and the community when it suits, but reject it when it doesn't.