Awesome, thanks for that!

I updated my Mastodon bio to "co-creator of GNU social" and will use that phrasing from now on.

Evan

On May 17, 2023 20:53, "Dr. Matt Lee" <mattl@hey.com> wrote:
Not on the list so please copy this to the list if it doesn’t come through.

My timeline from memory is roughly this:

- April 2009 Libre.fm is started via a post on identica

- Later in 2009 the idea of social networking features are being added to GNU FM (by now we’d started calling the project under a different name) and I’m uncomfortable with it as I don’t want to be a silo.

- various prototypes are made at the FSF, internally at first and later looping in interns (Sean, Ian) and friends who hung around the FSF. At this point the FSF staff have a fairly active darts league and we were making GNU Social to keep track of it.

- One of these people was Craig Andrews who suggested we should make plug-ins for StatusNet instead. Our goal was to replace Facebook, not Twitter.

- Craig assigned his copyright over to the FSF and makes a commit. Now StatusNet is partly FSF owned and GNU Social is now a set of plugins for StatusNet.

- Rhea Myers and I have our company, FooCorp and we’re looking at making a version of GNU Social like we have Libre.fm. It’s called daisycha.in but it never goes anywhere. At this point I start using the name GNU social (lowercase) to describe the new project, which is basically StatusNet plus plugins but at some point we distributed a copy of StatusNet with the project. I also don’t remember how well the plug-ins work.

- We have a mailing list called social-discuss@gnu.org — Diaspora project is also using it in early stages.

- At this point it’s 2010 we have new interns at the FSF. We have an event at the FSF with Evan, Blaine Cook and the various FSF staff/interns/friends. We get a logo and some mock-ups based on Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Evan/StatusNet Inc kindly funds my travel to OSCON. This becomes the first IndieWeb event.

- In 2012 I leave the FSF and there is some attempt by another GNU developer to take over the name. Stallman okayed it but didn’t know there was paperwork for GNU social copyright assignments so this is quickly reverted and the developer makes something else.

- In 2013 the merger has happened with FreeSocial (aka Free&Social), StatusNet (the project) and GNU Social under the name GNU social happens. I know this because https://www.gnu.org/software/social/merge.html talks about it. Wow the last decade has gone fast. 

After around 2012 I have no more involvement in GNU social and little involvement in GNU aside from occasional moments. Nowadays I have no contact with the FSF or GNU. 

So I’d say GNU social has arguably six founders. Myself, the GNU FM developers, Deborah Nicholson(ex FSF), Donald Robertson (Ex FSF), Evan, Mikael (Free Social). 

Of all these people, Evan wrote most of the code. Stevie DuBois did the logo. I changed the case of the project name. I might have done other stuff ;-) A bunch of very talented people gave up a lot of their time and energy at a time when none of this stuff was seen as especially cool to the wider world. Everyone should be commended for that. 

All of this was a long time ago now and this is all from memory so please let me know just how much I got wrong. 

As I say elsewhere I helped start the Fediverse now my interests are painting toy soldiers and making monkey movies. 

Best,
matt


On May 17, 2023, Evan Prodromou <evan@prodromou.name> wrote:
You're correct! The GNU Social project used a different codebase originally.

Sometime around 2010, I believe, Matt and the team switched over to using StatusNet as a base, plus some dedicated extensions.

And in 2013, we united StatusNet, GNU Social, and another fork called Free Social. We called the resulting project GNU Social.

https://www.gnu.org/software/social/merge.html

I feel pretty confident saying I am "the creator of GNU Social", although it may be slightly more accurate but also more confusing to say that I am "the creator of the software that is now known as GNU Social".

Wikipedia credits me as "the original author" of this software.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social?wprov=sfla1

Matt, what are your thoughts?

Evan
On May 17, 2023 18:16, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:


st 17. 5. 2023 v 22:44 odesílatel Evan Prodromou <evan@prodromou.name> napsal:
Hey, Melvin! I can see where you’d be confused, especially if you’re unaware of the history of the project.

I created the software originally called Laconica, then later StatusNet, which is the codebase that GNU Social is based on. I was not the sole developer, but I was the first one.

Matt Lee started the GNU Social project, but used the code I had made. Free Software ftw!

Because GNU Social is the most prominent currently active project using the original Laconica codebase, I usually refer to it when talking about my work. The Laconica Wikipedia page was renamed to GNU Social several years ago!


I hope that helps!

I appreciate your many contributions, Evan. I believe it's also important to remember Matt Lee's role in establishing GNU Social. I still recall his enlightening talk to the W3C Social Web Incubator Group in 2009, which possibly predated your involvement, if I'm not mistaken.

The gropu might find this link of interest: https://www.w3.org/2009/10/14-swxg-minutes.html#MattLee.

The discourse from that period, especially around seeking alternatives to Facebook, remains highly relevant and engaging to this day, in my opinion.  Perhaps this is still important work to be done.

 

Evan

On May 17, 2023, at 3:54 PM, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:



st 17. 5. 2023 v 20:56 odesílatel Evan Prodromou <evan@prodromou.name> napsal:
I’ll take this moment to make a self-introduction ahead of the meeting.

My name is Evan Prodromou; I am an entrepreneur and technologist who has been working on the social web since the mid-2000s.

I’m primarily known in this community for my work as co-author of the Activity Streams 2.0 and ActivityPub specifications.  I co-chaired the Social Web Working Group with Arnaud and Tantek.

I was also the founder of Identi.ca, creator of GNU Social and pump.io, and co-author of the OStatus specification.

I appreciate your contributions to the social web, Evan. However, I believe there may be a minor inaccuracy in your statement. To the best of my recollection, it was Matt Lee who originally founded GNU Social, as a spinoff from GNU FM. Let's ensure we properly acknowledge the efforts of all contributors in our shared history of social media innovation.
 

For the near future of ActivityPub, I’m very interested in developing an end-to-end encryption (E2EE) extension in-band, using the media type on `content` elements. I recently published some HCI research on this topic and how important it is to supporting personal relationships on the social web.

I have a social web account on https://cosocial.ca/evan . CoSocial is the Mastodon cooperative that I co-founded.

Further information about me and my work here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Prodromou 

Evan

On May 17, 2023, at 12:56 PM, Dmitri Zagidulin <dzagidulin@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi everyone,

Finding a regular meeting time slot that works with everyone continues to be an impossible task.

In the interest of getting momentum going, we'll be having our first SWICG call of the year this coming Friday, May 19, at 9 am EST / 6 am Pacific / 3 pm CET over at:


Apologies in advance to those who can't make it, let's continue the discussion on what we can do to accommodate more people (perhaps alternate biweekly calls, one on Fri and one on Saturday, etc).

AGENDA:

1) (NON-AGENDA item) Although the common first call agenda tradition is introductions, I'm wondering if we can shortcut the introduction process by doing it elsewhere, such as on the SWICG mailing list, or SocialHub forum. Otherwise there's a good chance that we'll take up the whole call with intros. :)

2) Overview of the W3C Community Group process (code of conduct, governance, etc) to refresh our memories.

3) Discussion and proposals for: 

* What are the goals and current focus of SWICG

* What is SWICG's relationship with the other centers of community and discussion, such as SocialHub https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/, Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEP) https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep, the Fedidevs Matrix chat rooms. (My view on this: We can all work together with those communities, without co-opting or interference.)

* Governance process for adopting Work Items. (For a good example of an existing effective Work Item Process, see the Credential Community Group's process doc: https://w3c-ccg.github.io/workitem-process/ )

4) Other discussion as time allows.

Thank you, talk to you soon.

Dmitri