Yes. Mastodon is a product of Mastodon gGmbH. He is the BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life) of the software. Anyone can fork the software if they so choose and make their own.
What I think @Foni@lemm.ee is trying to get at is that Mastodon is a non-profit and doesn’t have investors looking to make a return like Bluesky does. Mastodon is driven entirely by donations.
Maybe, but the thing about Mastodon, is that it works even without “Mastodon”. There are a slew of other platforms that work seamlessly with Mastodon. So if Rochko decides to do something you don’t like, you can move to Misskey or Pleroma or any number of other Mastodon-adjacent platforms while losing zero functionality.
What makes this work is ActivityPub as the backbone, as the protocol is open to anybody. ATProto, which Bluesky uses, is basically only used for Bluesky and nothing else. And Bluesky controls both their platform, and the protocol, whereas Mastodon controls only their own platform; the ActivityPub protocol is not owned or controlled by Mastodon in any way.
No, he is not the owner of Mastodon. No, his company is not responsible for what happens there, because there is no company or similar.
A non-profit foundation (chaired by Eugen Rochko) develops the software and launches it on mastodon.social, and that foundation does not even participate in what the rest of the instances do. They could go crazy tomorrow, sell the domain or change the software to make it more invasive, the rest of the instances would be sent to hell and the network would continue as if nothing had happened
Isn’t Eugen Rochko the owner of Mastodon? Isn’t he and his company responsible for what happens to it?
Yes. Mastodon is a product of Mastodon gGmbH. He is the BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life) of the software. Anyone can fork the software if they so choose and make their own.
What I think @Foni@lemm.ee is trying to get at is that Mastodon is a non-profit and doesn’t have investors looking to make a return like Bluesky does. Mastodon is driven entirely by donations.
Maybe, but the thing about Mastodon, is that it works even without “Mastodon”. There are a slew of other platforms that work seamlessly with Mastodon. So if Rochko decides to do something you don’t like, you can move to Misskey or Pleroma or any number of other Mastodon-adjacent platforms while losing zero functionality.
What makes this work is ActivityPub as the backbone, as the protocol is open to anybody. ATProto, which Bluesky uses, is basically only used for Bluesky and nothing else. And Bluesky controls both their platform, and the protocol, whereas Mastodon controls only their own platform; the ActivityPub protocol is not owned or controlled by Mastodon in any way.
No, he is not the owner of Mastodon. No, his company is not responsible for what happens there, because there is no company or similar. A non-profit foundation (chaired by Eugen Rochko) develops the software and launches it on mastodon.social, and that foundation does not even participate in what the rest of the instances do. They could go crazy tomorrow, sell the domain or change the software to make it more invasive, the rest of the instances would be sent to hell and the network would continue as if nothing had happened
Mastodon is non-proprietary software. So one person or company cannot own it in a meaningful sense.
His foundation might own the copyright on the name and logo, so that bad actors can’t pretend to be them. That’s pretty much it.