RIP, Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swarts, founder of Reddit, programmer, coauthor of the RSS 1.0 spec at the age of 14, writer, political organizer, and Internet activist, commited suicide on January 11 at the age of 26.

Cory Doctorow posted an eulogy about him.

(…) here’s a thing that I do wonder about this morning, and that I hope you’ll think about, too. I don’t know for sure whether Aaron understood that any of us, any of his friends, would have taken a call from him at any hour of the day or night. I don’t know if he understood that wherever he was, there were people who cared about him, who admired him, who would get on a plane or a bus or on a video-call and talk to him. Because whatever problems Aaron was facing, killing himself didn’t solve them. Whatever problems Aaron was facing, they will go unsolved forever.

If you have friends that struggle with depression, it is important that they know they are not alone.