Howdy all, Today I am saddened to learn that the prolific young activist for software freedom, Aaron Swartz <URL:http://www.aaronsw.com/>, was found dead on 2013-01-11. His death is reported as a suicide. Aaron was a co-founder of what became Reddit. He released as free software the web framework ‘web.py’, and the framework of the Open Library project. He was influential in the early years of Wikipedia <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RIP#Aaron_Swartz_.28AaronSw.29>, Creative Commons <URL:https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/36298>, and notably the Demand Progress site <URL:http://demandprogress.org/>. His friends Cory Doctorow <URL:http://boingboing.net/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz.html> and Lawrence Lessig <URL:http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully> are vocal about the role in Aaron's suicide of the US government in their overbearing prosecution of him as a felon on 13 charges, with US$4 million in fines, and over 50 years imprisonment. The stakes are high in the struggle for software freedom, and sometimes in the face of unchecked power wielded by the unscrupulous, the young and the bright burn out early. They pass the flame to us to carry on in their stead. -- \ “My girlfriend has a queen sized bed; I have a court jester | `\ sized bed. It's red and green and has bells on it, and the ends | _o__) curl up.” —Steven Wright | Ben Finney