[pemulis]

Which again makes me wonder why the tech world has been a week of adulation of Aaron Swartz, whose two greatest accomplishments (if you follow the lede of every story about him) were that he was pushed on the Reddit founders by PG after his own project failed (then exiting before them), and that he was one of a dozen plus people who authored a revision to a brutishly simplistic RSS 1.0 spec, his single celebrated attribute being his age.

Is that honestly all you took away from the stories about him? The only way I could see someone forming this opinion is if they had read only the lede of a piece about him before closing the tab.

[corresation]

The only way I could see someone forming this opinion is if they had read only the lede of a piece about him before closing the tab.

I was speaking specifically to those things that have been singled out as the items that make his story so newsworthy (the RSS one being a particularly odd one, the history completely distorted in the retelling for the purposes of narrative invention). I am fully aware of the various initiatives that Aaron was involved with.

[pemulis]

The distortion around his contribution to RSS is strongest in mainstream news articles written by people who don't really understand the history. When you read pieces by people in technology, activist, and art circles, especially people who actually knew and worked with him, you find many other projects he created or contributed to. And if you're fully aware of that, I think it's disingenuous to point to what a confused journalist thinks Aaron Swartz did and act like that's the full story.