I think the answer to your question has several layers. I’ll start with the most general layer and get more specific from there…
The ActivityPub protocol, which Lemmy and Mastodon (and other services) use to communicate, is published by W3C and was developed by a group of people. This page on W3C includes a list of authors. It looks like at least one author has a Mastodon account; I’m curious to see if mentioning them here will federate to Mastodon and get a response: @cwebber
Each Lemmy instance (there are >600 of them) was started by a different person. This is usually (but not always) the first admin listed in the sidebar on that instance’s homepage. Sometimes the founder is not the most active admin; in many cases they have recruited others to help in order to spread the work and reduce the chance that the instance dies when the founder has some unforeseen life event. Here are a few people who started some of the larger instances: @dessalines (mentioned above) @ruud @sunaurus @TheDude @db0 @smorks (took over that instance from a previous owner)
Lemmy is a collaborative work, but my understanding is lemmy.ml was the first Lemmy but not the first fediverse tool. If someone more knowledgeable can comment please do.
The fediverse has existed for much longer than lemmy has. I can put you in touch with the designers of the activitypub protocol, which the fediverse uses. I’m not sure what you need though
I just need a couple names or a single name so I can do an AMA Request and get it posted to AMA. I think it would be a neat interview and if need be i will send them the questions before.
I know that but looking for the OG of lemmyworld or the fediverse. Because it kind of seems like the creator was like bender by saying I don’t like the social media I see so I will go and create my own.
That’s a really strange “or.” .world has only existed for about a year, since the big reddit exodus, and it’s just an instance, running Lemmy software on a server. The Lemmy software was first released five years ago, but that wasn’t the beginning of the fediverse. Like all fediverse apps, Lemmy makes use of the Activity Pub protocol, which came out like a year earlier.
right. I've been running infosec.exchange for going on 8 years, and the fediverse was already around for a while before that. It seems unlikely that lemmy admins, in particular, would want to do an AMA on reddit for the very reason that causes them to run a lemmy instance in the first place. but, you never know, I guess
It literally cannot, because nobody owns it. Which is why there's some confusion in this thread.
You've basically entered a public beach asking for the manager. Everybody's looking around a bit confused. That guy over there has been here all day, so maybe he would do? Or maybe that guy over there who has a beach blanket with a bunch of friends on it? That kid over there built a nice sandcastle, maybe he's the one you'd like to talk to.
It's not like the private beach over at Reddit. There's not one clear person in charge, and not one person can shut it down or change the rules for everyone else.
We have some people occasionally trying to poison the water, but we're getting better at expelling them before they manage to do too much damage.
I understand but be it one person or a group just wanted to give my thanks and praise them. But someone somewhere had to come up with the fedivere or lemmyworld. It did not automaticcaly pop up out of know where. And something tells me there is an itch that the creator can’t scratch until he or she knows how much their work affected peoples lives in a good way.
It really did not pop out of nowhere, this comment here outlines it pretty well. Basically, there are the ones who came up with the protocol, the ones who came up with Lemmy (I think this is what you want) and the ones who started lemmy.world