Gregory's Server(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.