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Top-level
(1/?) @midtsveen @Gargron certainly deserves credit for creating the Mastodon software and leading the project infrastructure built around it. But as I'm sure he'd agree, the platform that Mastodon is currently the largest part of - the fediverse - is the work of hundreds of dedicated people. Many of whom worked unpaid (maybe still do), and all of whom deserve our thanks. 4 comments
(3/?) That's just the tip of the iceberg. It would be remiss of me not to mention Mike MacGirvin, creator of Friendica, Hubzilla, Zap, Forte, etc. Pushing the boundaries of what decentralised social media can do, both outside the fediverse and within, since the early days. Also the Diaspora team, who pioneered non-public posting. Also Lain and the Pleroma team, whose experiments like LitePub and Object Capabilities have also driven innovation in the space. (4/?) I could mention so many other developers, including the creators and maintainers of all the news and support sites. Which help people find the fediverse, and figure out how to use it. If I was going to make an exhaustive list we'd be here all day. My point is, let's not fall into the Great Man mythos that's so common in the history of science and technology. Especially in digital tech. Creating a network like the fediverse - like raising a child - takes a whole village. (5/5) Take Mastodon itself. Thanks for what it is today is owed to a village within the fediverse dev landscape. Hundreds of people contributed code and design ideas to Mastodon over the years. In fact, many of its most essential features required campaigns to convince Gargron they were priorities for people using it. We also owe some thanks to Iain Dodsworth, creator of TweetDeck (now X Pro). Which inspired Gargron to create a new client for the OStatus network, then dominated by GNU social. |
Gregory's Server
(2/?)
For a start, we also need to thank Evan Prodromou and the StatusNet crew for creating OStatus. Also Matt Lee and Mikael Nordfeldth for forking StatusNet to create GNU social, which the original Mastodon was designed to be compatible with.
Not to mention Christine Lemmer-Webber, Jessica Tallon, Erin Shepherd, and Amy Guy. Along with Evan, they led the W3C group that wrote the ActivityPub spec. Which allowed the fediverse - including Mastodon - to become what it is today.