EFF: Bassel Khartabil, In Memoriam

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that Bassel Khartabil, Syrian open source developer, blogger, entrepreneur, hackerspace founder, and free culture advocate, was executed by the Syrian authorities. "Bassel was a central figure in the global free culture movement, connecting it and promoting it to Syria's emerging tech community as it existed before the country was ransacked by civil war. He co-founded Aiki Lab, Syria's first hackerspace, in Damascus in 2010. He was a contributor to Mozilla's Firefox browser and the Syrian lead for Creative Commons. His influence went beyond Syria, however: he was a key attendee at the Middle East's bloggers' conferences, and played a vital role in the negotiations in Doha in 2010 that led to a common language for discussing fair use and copyright across the Arab-speaking world." (Thanks to Paul Wise)

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