The other four distros they use are Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Gobuntu and Mythbuntu.

What does ceding control even mean? Mastodon, just like Lemmy, is federated - each instance has its own governance. It was never controlled by a single person to begin with.

He can cede control of the GitHub repository, I guess, but:

1. That’s giving the controls to the contributors, not the users.
2. The article does not even hint at the existence of source code, and the announcement itself doesn’t talk about changes in that aspect either, so I don’t think that’s what’s happening here.