It is clearly stated in the whitepaper that Hiveway has Mastodon as its core platform, and that it will be heavily modified. There was a good point regarding the LICENSE though, a COPYRIGHT file was added, mentioning the original authors and changes made until now, in order to comply with the terms of AGPLv3.
If you have other constructive observations, we are happy to listen, and we will implement them. You can also register as a contributor for the project if you want on GitHub. This is a project that will be owned by the community in the end

It's good to know that dev already addressed this issue now. I just hope that there will be no scam accusations in the near future and really hoping that this project is legit and serious in developing.