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Calckey rebrands to Firefish (calckey.social)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Calckey/Firefish is based off of Misskey, a powerful microblogging server on ActivityPub with features such as emoji reactions, a customizable web UI, rich chatting.

Wow, what a wild ride, huh? From those first brainstorming sessions that sparked Calckey, to the epic journey that brings us here today, rebranding as Firefish - I've gotta say, I'm seriously blown away.

One year ago, Calckey was just my side project, after being a Misskey contributor for a while. But when y'all jumped on board, you made it so much more. You transformed it from my dream to our reality.

Firefish isn't just a cool name. It's everything we've been working towards. It's late nights, strong coffee, wild ideas, laughs, and even the occasional tears. It's our little space on the web where we're constantly pushing for the next big thing, and always looking out for one another.

So here we are, at the start of something new. Firefish is more than just a rebrand - it's a celebration. A celebration of you, me, and us. It's a tribute to the amazing community we've built together. Firefish is all of YOU.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The name is way too similar to the Firefox trademark and could create the impression that Firefish is associated with Mozilla. I suspect some lawyers are currently in a huddle trying to figure out how to send a Cease and Desist letter that won’t completely piss off the community.

(Trademark law, at least in the US where Mozilla is headquartered, requires organizations to actively defend their trademarks. So just ignoring Firefish would be risky, even if they don’t actually mind the similarity.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's the reasonable extent of their trade mark? Anything involving "Fire" + "animal" ... or "animals" starting with "f"? Actually, now that I think that through, "fish" alliterating with "fox", and the non-trivial amount of "fox"/"furry" love on the platform does make this seem like a less trivial issue.

But still ... it seems to be in the space of similar but not trade mark infringement no?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good question! Whether it’s actually infringement is a legal judgment I’m certainly not qualified to make. 🙂 But my understanding is that it hinges on whether a court thinks a “reasonable person” could be confused. For example, a clothing brand called “Firefoxy” would probably be in the clear since Mozilla isn’t in the clothing business. And maybe even a clothing brand named “Firefox” might be okay! For example, Apple Computer and Apple Records (founded by The Beatles) coexisted nicely for a long time until Apple Computer started getting into the music-selling business. I forget how it got resolved (maybe a licensing agreement?) but The Beatles’ music wasn’t available on the iTunes Music Store for a looooong time while that dispute was going on.

Firefish is an online service and software package, the very space Mozilla operates in, so there’s at least a case to be made that reasonable people might incorrectly assume it’s from Mozilla. It’s come up many times in this discussion already, and we as active Fediverse users are already pretty well informed about this!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yea it might fall into the "similar, but not really infringement, but similar enough to cause some headaches especially for a very small volunteer run social media platform" territory.

Thanks for the response!!