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Comment by azernik | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting that the Economist managed to figure out that Swartz's cause was open access to public documents, while the New York Times (even in a second article published today) is still writing about him as a purist all-information-must-be-free ideologue.

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The Economist writes spectacular obituaries. The editors work on them to fine polish - Ray Bradbury's was in development for many weeks before seeing publication.

On the one hand, I was surprised that Swartz was the subject this week. On the other, it comes as no surprise. Ink has been devoted to what it takes to be worthy of a New York Times obituary. That Aaron Swartz's death made the Economist speaks to the deep impact that his life's work has had.

The Economist obits are indeed wonderful. It's almost always the first thing I read in it. But, as a point of clarification, this article is not the weekly obit. It's part of the Babbage blog. It remains to be seen if something about him will make the print edition.

I don't think this is their "official" obit for Swartz. This article was published under one of their online blogs, not their printed obits section.

However I suspect that within a few weeks such an article will appear.

http://www.economist.com/obituaries

Aaron's interest in the freedom to share information went beyond just 'open access to public documents'. See for example:

http://bits.are.notabug.com/

The 'Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto', also, does not limit its sights to just those materials that are traditionally, or commonly understood to be, "public documents", but to the "the world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage".

http://pastebin.com/cefxMVAy

With no legal case remaining to win, Aaron's views don't need moderating spin.

The whole quote is "The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals...". He then goes on to talk exclusively about academic publishing in the rest of the manifesto.

Even the title - "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" - refers to a very specific movement in favor of freely available ("Open Access") academic journals.

I think your reading of the Manifesto misses the forest for a tree.

Scientific papers or the even smaller set of 'public documents' were not the whole program, just a useful (and especially moderate and academically respectable) 1st step. The whole program is opposing all "laws that restrict what bits I can put on my website".

As the wordplay joke at the bottom of the "Bits are not a bug" page notes, "Attorney General's Warning: This page advocates advocacy of the violent overthrow of the United States Government."

This would be Glenn Fleishman who figured it out. He's one of us. Has an awesome twitter feed @GlennF.

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