Aaron Swartz, a brilliant person, a sad ending

[Tom Balazs]

Aaron Swartz, computer programmer and activist, committed suicide on
January 11th, aged 26
-
http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21569674-aaron-swartz-computer-programmer-and-activist-committed-suicide-january-11th-aged-26-aaron

Swartz was well-known in technology circles for helping develop the RSS web
feed format and the popular site Reddit, among other accomplishments. At
the time of his death, he was facing 13 felony charges and up to 50 years
in prison: Prosecutors had accused him of using MIT's network to download
too many scholarly articles from an academic database called JSTOR.
- Swartz's friends and family have said they believe he was driven to his
death by a justice system that hounded him needlessly over an alleged crime
with no real victims. "[He was] forced by the government to spend every
fiber of his being on this damnable, senseless trial," his partner Taren
Stinebrickner-Kauffman said at the memorial, "with no guarantee that he
could exonerate himself at the end of it."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-did-the-justice-system-target-aaron-swartz-20130123

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swartz-internet-activist-dies-at-26.html?_r=0
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/pipermail/linux-il/attachments/20130124/f248bcf2/attachment.html>