My 2025 with the fediverse

Last year, I wrote an article titled A year with the fediverse, and this year I find myself writing on a similar theme again. Since I've started working full-time on open source software related to the fediverse,¹ I have a feeling I'll be writing articles like this every year as long as I continue this work.

Thinking Penguin Magazine Vol.0

I had the opportunity to contribute to Thinking Penguin Magazine Vol.0, the first doujinshi published by FediLUG, a gathering of fediverse developers in Japan. My article was titled From mixed script Korean to Hollo (国漢文混用体からHolloまで), covering how I came to create Fedify² and Hollo³. This magazine was also exhibited at the 11th Gishohaku (Technical Book Doujinshi Fair). Although I couldn't attend in person due to time constraints, just being part of the exhibition was a valuable experience.

BotKit

Early this year, I created BotKit, an ActivityPub bot framework built on top of Fedify. I believe I initially wanted to create some kind of fediverse bot account, but I honestly can't remember what it was anymore.

In any case, BotKit was born out of frustration with the limitations of creating an account on an ActivityPub server like Mastodon or Misskey and using their respective APIs to post. Instead, BotKit apps function as their own ActivityPub servers. This architecture provides freedom from various constraints like maximum character limits and rate limits.

After releasing it, several fediverse bots have been created using BotKit, though admittedly it's not widely used yet.

Hackers' Pub

I created Hackers' Pub, an invite-only ActivityPub-based community for software developers, late last year. This year, it gained a lot of traction, and I got to interact with a truly diverse group of software developers. In particular, Lee Jae-yeol enthusiastically promoted Hackers' Pub, which brought many people to the community.

In the summer, I commissioned designer Bak Eunji to create Hackers' Pub's visual identity, and we ended up with an adorable cat logo. Fortunately, people on Hackers' Pub loved this cat, and it even earned the nickname Pub Kitty (펍냥이). We also made T-shirts and stickers featuring Pub Kitty, and the response was great.

If you're reading this and are interested in Hackers' Pub, feel free to contact me personally and I can send you an invitation.

Software Sessions appearance

This spring, I had the opportunity to appear on Software Sessions, an internet radio show hosted by Jeremy Jung, to talk about ActivityPub and Fedify: Hong Minhee on ActivityPub. However, since it was conducted in English, I was quite nervous and rambled a lot, which I still regret. I thought I should practice English conversation more. (But as always, I only thought about it and never actually followed through…)

Finding Our Code appearance

For the first time in my life, I also appeared on YouTube. I was featured on the Finding Our Code (우리의 코드를 찾아서) series on Park Hyunwoo's One Day Dev channel, in an episode titled Exploring Fedify & Hollo with Minhee (民憙 님과 Fedify & Hollo 알아보기). I was able to share the behind-the-scenes story of how I came to create Fedify and Hollo in a relaxed atmosphere.

Open Source Software Contribution Academy (OSSCA)

Fedify was selected as a participating project for the 2025 Open Source Software Contribution Academy (OSSCA), hosted by the Open Source Software Integration Support Center (Open UP) under Korea's National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA). This gave me the opportunity to connect with many excellent contributors. Over 90 people applied, and I was able to work on the Fedify project with about 20 of them.

In fact, Fedify 1.8 and Fedify 1.9 couldn't have been released without the contributions of the people I met through OSSCA.

In particular, ChanHaeng Lee, Hyeonseo Kim, Jiwon Kwon, and Lee Jae-yeol⁴ have continued to contribute to Fedify even after the OSSCA period ended, which is incredibly reassuring. Thanks to this connection, we all traveled to Fukuoka together in November.

Fedify investment

Last summer, after receiving funding from Ghost, I was able to work full-time on the Fedify project for a while. However, that ended in the first quarter of this year, leaving me back at square one. To find new funding sources, I applied to NLnet this spring, but unfortunately was rejected. Just as I was considering getting a job, fortunately my application to STF was accepted. I ended up receiving a much more generous investment than what I could have received from NLnet, turning misfortune into a blessing. I wrote about this in detail in STF invests in Fedify.

In any case, I'm grateful that I'll be able to focus full-time on the Fedify project for the next year.

Various presentations

This year, I had many opportunities to present at various meetups and conferences.

My first presentation of the year was at the 8th FediLUG study meetup⁵ held in early April. I presented under the same title as my article in Thinking Penguin Magazine Vol.0: From mixed script Korean to Hollo (国漢文混用体からHolloまで). The content was largely the same as the article. Since I couldn't afford to travel to Japan, the presentation was conducted online.

My next presentation was also in Japan, at the Making the fediverse: From the frontlines of developers and administrators (Fediverseのつくりかた 〜開発者・管理者たちの現場から〜) seminar held at OSC 2025 Kyoto in early August. I presented on BotKit by Fedify: Easy ActivityPub bot creation for everyone (BotKit by Fedify：誰でも簡単に作れるActivityPubボット). This time too, I participated online since I couldn't make it to Kyoto.

In the fall, I gave the keynote speech at FOSS for All Conference 2025, Korea's first free and open source software conference, titled Embracing yak shaving (야크 셰이빙: 새로운 오픈 소스의 原動力). This presentation was based on my Japanese presentation From mixed script Korean to Hollo, but also covered my open source projects unrelated to the fediverse.

In winter, I presented at liftIO 2025, a Korean functional programming conference, with a talk titled Optique: Replacing CLI validation with TypeScript type inference (Optique: TypeScript의 타입 推論으로 CLI 有效性 檢查를 代替하기). This was the only presentation I gave this year that wasn't related to the fediverse.

Wrapping up the year

I thought I hadn't done much, but looking back, I actually accomplished quite a lot this year. Since the STF investment extends until the end of next year, I'll likely continue many activities related to the fediverse, centered around the Fedify project. Personally, I'm worried that ActivityPub and the fediverse haven't yet established a solid foothold—despite X falling into Elon Musk's hands. I hope the situation improves next year.