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1. kaniini (kaniini@mastodon.dereferenced.org)'s status on Sunday, 31-Dec-2017 03:16:07 EST kaniini

   counter.social is an instance that is unpalatable to many users because of broken and utterly incorrect policies that may or may not be nationalist depending on who you ask.

   i have no opinion on the instance itself, at best it is an instance that is run by a highly misinformed admin, at worst, it is an instance that is run by a nationalist.

   however, yesterday I jumped into the twitter thread where Eugen was fighting with them, because he threatened to take a completely improper AGPL enforcement action against them.

   accordingly, I jumped in to simply advise both parties of their obligations under the AGPL: he asserted that AGPL requires interoperability, when it does not.

   continuing to hold such a position would damage credibility when trying to engage in actual AGPL enforcement actions; this is why I always recommend to developers to speak to a lawyer before asserting their license has been violated.

   this does not mean i agree with the approach used by counter.social (essentially I don't)

   i have an extensive background in paralegal work when it comes to FOSS, and am happy to provide any instance admin with advice concerning their obligations under the AGPL if requested, just ping me and i will get back to you...

   1. kaniini (kaniini@mastodon.dereferenced.org)'s status on Sunday, 31-Dec-2017 03:21:50 EST kaniini

      in reply to

      a workable enforcement strategy to disassociate counter.social with Mastodon would be to use Mastodon's implicit trademark rights to make the counter.social admin remove all references to Mastodon from his instance.

      this may have chilling effects however, because trademark rights require equal enforcement action, meaning that you can't pick and choose who you want to enforce against.

      a workaround could be to create a trademark license, explicitly spelling out what types of instances are allowed to be called "Mastodon instances," but this may have chilling effects on forks.

      it will be important to be extremely careful when creating a trademark license agreement to ensure that Mastodon remains with the same atmosphere.