ianwremmel
Avdi GrimmThe 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.
Richard Schneeman@avdi and the “Rails foundation” neither owns the trademark (it is “on loan” from Dave) nor helps manage development nor governance.
Bee O'Problem 
Kai Klostermann> I'm solidly in favor of the Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL) model of open source stewardship.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/open-source-royalty-and-mad-kings-a8f79d16
Open source royalty and mad kings
I'm solidly in favor of the Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL) model of open source stewardship. This is how projects from Linux to Python, from Laravel to Ruby, and yes, Rails, have kept their cohesion, decisiveness, and forward motion. It's a model with decades worth of achievements to its name. But it's not a mandate from heaven. I...
webhat@OddDev @beeoproblem @Schneems @avdi DHH is one of the reasons I don't use RoR any longer, although Ruby is probably one of my favourite languages
Anders Eknert@anderseknert @OddDev @webhat @beeoproblem @avdi Alt text: "The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point"
Pedro Machado Santa@avdi Considering that Mastodon just partnered with Meta on https://socialwebfoundation.org , this is prescient AF.
Old Man in the Shoe@pedrosanta @avdi Who didn't partner with them, they're all listed
mirabilos@jenzi @pedrosanta @avdi at least GtS didn’t
but Pixelfeed did, so maybe using it is not a good idea @rl_dane
Keelan@pedrosanta @avdi ahh the ol’ Embrace Extend Extinguish trick.
charles@pedrosanta @avdi Ehhh fck. I don't begrudge a guy or gal making some coin on their hard work, I just wish there were more models for it besides capitalism and the consolidation and enshittification it entails.
JonYep. 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.
@pedrosanta @[email protected]
@pedrosanta @[email protected]
nN3mesisIsn't it funny that it only has Twitter and Threads social links? (it isn't)
Would there be a point in creating a parallel but similar foundation? How do we start?
Dr. Angus Andrea Grieve-Smith@avdi Excellent point! But in the case of WordPress it seems that a foundation with a board has not been sufficient protection from paranoid one-person rule.
sheislaurence@sheislaurence @avdi As we should also know as software developers, if we copy a solution that doesn't work for other people, it probably won't work for us.
I mean, we may be able to tweak it and make it work. I'm saying it's not a constructive practice to point to it and say "we don't even have that!" if it's not helping in the case we're pointing to.
CodexNotFound@grvsmth @sheislaurence @avdi if the setup of the foundation is done in a way where no one person can make major decisions on their own it will most probably work though. Look at blender or Godot.
No it’s the same situation, Matt owns everything. A foundation means little if you never “got around” to giving the foundation it actual control over anything.
There are *actual* foundations in Open Source, such as Apache. Saying “a foundation wasn’t enough” in the case of WP is disingenuous.
@avdi Please don't accuse me of being disingenuous. You're agreeing that a foundation wasn't enough.
I just think it'll be more useful to point to a situation where a foundation works, not just one where it doesn't.
[Edited to avoid the impression Greg got that I'm demanding any kind of interaction or "discourse."]
Greg@grvsmth @avdi This is really "sea-lion" behavior, asking for examples and demanding discourse. There is no Gartner Magic Quadrant for OSS Foundations upon which to compare them. If one did exist, I think it would highlight that there are different dimensions over which these foundations can fail or succeed. And they can fail or succeed harder at some times than others. But comparing them all is like judging a box of mangoes. You're usually better off having the worst one than none at all.
@gregdavis Okay, I mis-spoke. I shouldn't have said "I'm asking," because I don't actually want @avdi to do or say anything in particular. I was just defending myself from his accusation of disingenuous behavior.
In my original reply I was expressing frustration at a pattern I've seen before, and hoping that my comment would add helpful clarity.
But really, Greg: "sea lion" accusations are generally not constructive. Please find another way to say you think someone's being too demanding.
Scott Bronson
Kraftwerk-Das Model Collapse@avdi btw fyi, when I "copy link to post" for your toot, and open that link ( https://avdi.codes/26777-2/ ), I only get JSON
Troed Sångberg@avdi Sure, but let's be honest about the steps that have been taken as well.
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2021/08/mastodon-now-a-non-profit-organisation/
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. To found such a legal entity the founding document must pass a review by the German tax office and the founders must pay in 25,000 EUR of starting capital.
Magnus KI4OTK@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.
ティージェーグレェ@ki4otk Right?
Mastodon is not the FediVerse, it's just an ActivityPub implementation.
Personally I think @grunfink's snac (https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2) has a lot more going for it.
But @peertube is pretty awesome for videos.
@teajaygrey TBH this is still kind of weird that you have to build your own Docker containers. One litmus test for me is that the build instructions are basically to use a Docker image that's already out on a major repository, all config is externalized. This current approach looks like it requires too much effort to update regularly. @grunfink @peertube @avdi
@ki4otk You mean with snac?
Docker containers are absolutely not necessary.
I am the MacPorts snac maintainer.
I have never used Docker with snac.
Heck, snac has even been known to build on Irix.
It's just C.
Note the section in the notes which mentioned Docker are for *testing* (which I consider different from prod).
No need to unnecessarily overcomplicate it.
@teajaygrey docker is kind of the de-facto standard for #selfhosting.
#fediverse apps have a really weird relationship with Docker that I just don't understand.
@ki4otk geeze I guess I'm just crazy since I've been self hosting things for decades before Docker even existed.
@teajaygrey oh me too.
Since about '84 and the BBS scene.
But dockerized apps using commodity images make it stupid easy to self host *many* apps and keep them up to date without having to build from source.
James Just James@avdi True but like 99% of everything else is proprietary/enshitification, so let's focus on those things first.
wakest likes your bugs ⁂@avdi does Mastodon GmbH or the US wing they just started not own the trademark and joinmastodon.org?
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.
@liaizon @[email protected]
@liaizon @[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
Nik@jdp23 @liaizon @avdi gGmbH owns the trademark. This is trivial to confirm.
https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/marke/registerHABM?AKZ=018850556&CURSOR=4
DPMAregister | Marken - Auskunft zu einer Unionsmarke
DPMAregister stellt die amtliche Publikationsplattform des DPMA dar, mit Hilfe derer das Amt die Veröffentlichungen vornimmt, die im Rahmen der anhängigen Verfahren im Patent-, Gebrauchsmuster-, Marken- und Designsachen gesetzlich vorgesehen sind.
Yes, and who is the sole owner of Mastodon gGmbH?
Justin ⏚@avdi I think it's important to not let perfect be the enemy of the good. The private equity company that owns WP Engine is not anyone's friend. The people who deserve the most criticism are not the ones maintaining free open source software.
Andy Davies@andydavies @avdi Nobody hates FOSS more than FOSS world.
Rigo Wenning@avdi Mastodon is a gemeinnützige GmbH. So you‘re barking up the wrong tree.
Which is solely owned by Eugen, to the disappointment of his collaborators, who wanted a foundation. And now isn’t even a nonprofit anymore. I really wish folks would do their research.
@avdi are you sure? A GmbH needs at least 2 founders. So far, we haven’t even talked about “ownership“. We have talked about purposes laid down in bylaws. And for the collaborators, they should contact the German unions. They know how to deal with participation. Unless you argue that the foundation would be a good first step to remove control by @Gargron , which is not exactly the charitable goal that started the discussion.
jsj
Gytis Repečka@avdi Luckily, Mastodon is far from only fediverse server 
I migrated away from 
server after Eugen started flirting with Meta 
Paul Hoffman@avdi From reading his occasional writing, I'm pretty sure that, two or three years ago, if you suggested to MattM that he would do and say the things he is doing and saying today, he would sincerely say you were full of shit. People can surprise themselves in terrible ways.
qwazix@avdi that's one reason why we must put our weight behind "fediverse" as a term. The other is to insulate against questionable software choices.
Mans R@avdi oh, fuck Mastodon, goto social and be part of the Fediverse.
Skizorutabaga 🖖@avdi what happened ? Any link please ?
Gik 
| 💙➡️🇺🇦@avdi ah yes, identify single points of failure early.
TrickTim@avdi
Do NOT mess with John Mastodon.
Do NOT mess with John Mastodon.
Aroop Roelofs@avdi Welll... Mastodon is at least built on standards that are implemented elsewhere, so it's a lot easier to move when shit hits the fan.
I think, at worst, you'd lose userdata (because database schemes might not be compatible) but you can probably write things to make that migration doable...
In the case of WordPress, well... If you wanna move to a "competing implementation"... There aren't really any "other WordPresses", they are completely different systems (themes and plugins won't be compatible) so you'll need to rebuild pretty much everything from scratch.
Sure, you can fork WP but now you've also added additional development to do.
Speaking as someone who actually DID move off of Mastodon, have fun with that theory.
wbpeckham@avdi Theory? Have you looked at Rustodon? Have a glance here: https://antonio.is/2024/08/23/activitypub-microblogging-alternatives/
If you're a decent coder and almost anything enough to create a blog activity pub is so simple a protocol that it's not hard to build that into it. What I'm saying is, if you don't like any of the 52 that are already out there, you can write your own. It's open standards.
Activitypub microblogging alternatives
There are a few alternatives to Mastodon in the fediverse. You can easily find some list in websites like Join the fediverse, Fediverse Party and Fediverse Info. But I want to list someone that I found interesting: misskey - Built with typescript has a really cool Reactions feature. Pleroma - Supports both ActivityPub and OStatus. It is developed in Elixir. Firefish - This is a fork of Misskey. Go to social - Very lightweight.