@blaine @Gargron I don’t think you realize the minefield here. Remember a few facts: APIs cannot be copyrighted, a federation of computers on the public internet is not an own-able thing, and an organization has to be extremely deliberate in order to avoid a name becoming a generic trademark. “Linux” is not Debian nor SUSE nor RedHat, but all of those things are definitely Linux. So good luck with Mastodon, it’s probably a lost cause.

@Gargron @blaine you don’t get to control that. Mastodon has become like “Kleenex” instead of “facial tissue” and it is very possible that it a court of competent jurisdiction takes away some of your rights to control how “Mastodon” is used. If enough people do use the term “Mastodon” to mean to “Fediverse”, eventually you will lose your trademark rights.