@haubles @ErikUden then please clearly state that in the trademarks terms. Otherwise you would have to read it as such. Since the logo might be considered protected otherwise.

Thank you very much

@Suiseiseki @SuperDicq no. you know working democracies (not the US) have what you call seperation of powers.

There are very narrow circumstances where the executive branch is allowed to make rules themselves. And only where laws passed by the parliament allow them to. Mostly for executive functions since laws do not rule over any edge-case that might come up.

These rules though usually only bind the executive and their doings in narrow circumstances.

Only the legislative is able to pass proper laws that actually change taxes.

@Suiseiseki @SuperDicq net.au (australia) is a tld so mastodon is to be considered a second level in that case. Thats why.

They get to make certain rules on what they wanna their trademark to be used.

Also you do not have to have every single instance of a word trademarked to be protected as well.

Trademarks are used to protect consumers (thats the idea behind them). So consumers can make sure they are getting what they expect from brand A.

You can also infringe a trademark by being to similar to a given trademark when you are occupiying the same space in the market.

@bazkie I mean I get where you are coming from sorta but full decentralization of everything just does not seem feaseable for a software project the size of mastodon at all.

I can generally get behind why the people behind the idea of the brand of mastodon want to protect what they have. Their livelyhood is tied to that brands imagine. They work for the company that makes mastodon itself possible.

So misuse in a sense of the brand can obviously exist. Without the trademark I could go on and give myself off as official-mastodon(tm) and ruin their reputation.

Holding that trademark gives them the ability to defend the status. And trademarks themselves are not my issue here. All big Open Source has them and needs them.

My issue lies with the terms for servers running it that are in my viewpoint to restrictive

@SuperDicq Then you have every reason to hate and block me

@SuperDicq the worst is you going to jail. But thats really pushing it

But I am serious. I literally work for a government

@SuperDicq dunno for a wordmark it might. Not a trademark-lawyer myself. I do taxes for a living

@SuperDicq I meant masto asking lawyers with their trademark policy btw...

@SuperDicq as well: for some images they used from elsewhere some License-files are provided with them.

I have not found the logos in the code yet but they have to be somewhere since they are there when you deploy mastodon.

@SuperDicq sure is ey. But thats for mastos lawyers to figure.

But tbh I dunno if they even asked like proper lawyers at like the FSF. They would gladly help I am sure

@grillchen @SuperDicq Pretty sure though the Gentoo logo is also not in the sourcecode though

@SuperDicq I am tbh unsure if GPL (since logos are included in the source code) beats this policy.

They should have made clear tbh

@Jain Ich hab damit nix zu tun! (For legal reasons)

Moralisch bin ich bei dir

@snow ILLEGAL!

Go straight to jail don't go over start you don't 200€.

øl mastodon incoming

@weebdeluxe @bugbear There sure is still some good stuff in modern pokemon. The outfits they added since X/Y is one of them. And somehow they even resisted the urge to add MTX for them

Mastodon is doing clown stuff again...

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/08/sharing-guidelines-about-mastodons-trade-mark-policy/

I know you have to protect trademarks and stuff in the US especially. But I sure hope they add an option to easily change the logo of the site soon.

@bazkie Its not even their fault. Legal systems especially the US one just suck balls.

So you need a trademark to able to protect it from misuse but in order to keep the trademark you must also litigate any unlicensed use of it in order to keep it. (when US law applies. I dunno if german law even has such a stupid provision....)

@ErikUden @haubles don't forget to rip out the mastodon logos from the software though or get consent to use them.

@weebdeluxe Stuff might get more interesting for forks of masto that change q lot. They might need changing as well btw

@Sylvhem @haubles @Mastodon They will have to make that change. Otherwise as far as I understood you need written consent to use it.