Town Square ownership

 
 
POSTED: January 18, 2025
 
 
 
 
 

The people should own the town square, says a blog post by the Mastodon Team, published yesterday.

The post announces their intention of transferring “ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components (including name and copyrights, among other assets) to a new non-profit organization, affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual”.

This, I suspect, has some connection with the ongoing brouhaha about the governance of WordPress. It represents an attempt to think ahead and avoid unintended consequences when optimistic utopianism comes to a fork in the road and takes it.

Thank you, Yogi Berra.