I never met Aaron Swartz. I wasn’t familiar with the name until Saturday, when I learned that he’d committed suicide the day before. I never had any direct contact with him (that I know of), never followed his work… as far as I can tell, I never had any personal or professional dealings with him at all. So I am certainly not qualified to contribute to the discussion surrounding his death.
That said, I think it’s important to point out two things:
- He was one of the original designers of the original RSS specification. Fully one third of my audience accesses my content via RSS feeds.
- He was one of the architects of the Creative Commons License. Adopting a CC License for my entire body of work is one of the biggest decisions I’ve ever made.
I never met him or knew him, but his fingerprints are all over this website. I think it’s appropriate to acknowledge that.
