Monero Space is an active, project-focused Monero workgroup that provides services to the Monero community. It hosts popular resources and organizes events such as Monero Meet.
Monero was launched in April 2014. It was a fair, pre-announced launch of the CryptoNote reference code. There was no premine or instamine, and no portion of the block reward goes to development. See the original Bitcointalk thread