Existing info sources:
- articles on the Chronicles/ Knowledge pages of the site
- WeDistribute.org
- Strypey's 'brief history' blog piece: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fediverse-history-piece-from-2017-a-brief-history-of-the-gnu-social-fediverse-and-the-federation/4481
- talks from the online-only 2020 ActivityPub Conference; https://im.youronly.one/techmagus/kb/ddfon/federated-social-network-timeline/
- The Mycelial Web timeline by TechMagus: https://codeberg.org/ddfon/federated-sns/src/branch/main/mycelial-web-history.markdown
Timeline could include referenced dates for:
OStatus/ Identica/ GNU social
Founding of Laconica/ Identica project
Publication of OpenMicroBlogging spec
Rebranding as StatusNet/ OStatus: https://web.archive.org/web/20090831073527/http://status.net/2009/08/28/laconica-is-now-statusnet/
Publication of OStatus spec
Identi.ca switched to pump.io
Forking of Free & Social
Founding of GNU social
Merger of StatusNet, and Free & Social, into GNU social
Founding of Qvitter, and the Quitter instances (quitter.se etc)
Founding of Pleroma
Founding of postActiv
Founding of Mastodon
Friendica/ Hubzilla adding OStatus compatibility
Diaspora
Founding of Diaspora project
Crowdfunding success on Kickstarter
First Diaspora pod
Publication of Diaspora spec
Founding of SocialHome, and other apps that began as Diaspora alternative
Founding of Libertree (fork of Diaspora using its own protocol)
Friendica/ Hubzilla adding Diaspora compatibility
Zot/ Friendica/ Hubzilla/ Zap
Founding of Mistpark project
Publication of DFRN spec
Rename to Friendika
Rename to Friendica
Launch of RedMatrix project
Rename to Hubzilla
Forking of Zap and Osada
Sunsetting of Osada
Forking of app-commonly-known-as-streams
FEPs to add Zot functionality to AP
Forking of Forte
ActivityPub/ pump.io
Publication of Pump.Io Pump API spec
GNU MediaGoblin announces federation plans, inspired by GNU social and pump.io (somewhere in https://mediagoblin.org/news/)
"ActivityPump" proposed for standardisation at W3C (ActivityPump mentioned a few times here https://mediagoblin.org/news/)
Social Web Working group chartered
Name change to AP
2018: AP becomes a W3C recommendation in https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
Mastodon announces AP support
Sean Tilley's canonical WD on the prospects of the "Activity-verse"
AP support announcments from each legacy project
Founding announcements from AP native projects
XMPP on the web
2008 XEP-xxxx: Microblogging Over XMPP (published 2008-05-07)