If  you rarely heard about Aaron Swartz before the news of his suicide on January 11th, 2013 or even had no idea of he was, don’t worry. You’re not alone. This words following don’t pretend to be an obituary but a brief article to share what Swartz did to be recalled as “a hero of the free culture movement” in The New York Times (January 13th, 2013) after his death.

In the obituary, at Creative Commons website, Board member Lawrence Lessig remembered how, at the age of 16 years old, young Swartz get involved in the design for the code layer of Creative Commons licenses. Furthermore, he coauthored the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and, after his involvement in the Creative Commons team, he co-founded the social bookmarking and news aggregator Reddit and helped building Archive, a free public library. Continue reading →