From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Benjamin Mako Hill (born December 2, 1980) is a
Debian hacker,
intellectual property researcher, activist and author. He is a
contributor and free software developer as part of the Debian and
Ubuntu projects as well as the author of two best-selling technical
books on the subject, Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible (ISBN
978-0-7645-7644-7) and The Official Ubuntu Book (ISBN
978-0-13-243594-9). He currently serves as a member of the Free Software Foundation board
of directors.[2] Hill
has a Masters degree from the MIT Media Lab and is currently a
Senior Researcher at the MIT Sloan School of
Management where he studies free software communities and
business models. He is also a Fellow at the MIT Center for Future
Civic Media where he coordinates the development of software for
civic organizing, and works as an advisor and contractor for the One
Laptop per Child project. He is a speaker for the GNU Project,[3] and
serves on the board of Software
Freedom International (the organization that organizes Software
Freedom Day). Since 2006 he is married to Mika Matsuzaki,
having used mathematically constrained wedding vows at the marriage
ceremony.[4]
Debian
Since 1999, Hill has been an active member of Debian. He has served as a delegate of the
Debian Project Leader, managing money and equipment and is a
founder and coordinator of Debian Non-Profit, a
Debian custom distribution designed to fill the needs of small
non-profit organizations. In addition he served on the board of Software in the Public
Interest from March 2003 until July 2006,[5][6] serving
as the organisation's vice-president from August 2004.[7]
Ubuntu
Hill is also a core-developer and founding member of Ubuntu, and
continues to be an active contributor to the project. In addition
to technical responsibilities, he coordinated the construction of a
community around the Ubuntu Project as project "community manager"
(later ceding the role to Jono Bacon) during the Ubuntu's first year
and a half. During this period, he worked full time for Canonical Ltd. Within the Project, he
continues to serve on the "Community Council" governance board that
oversees all non-technical aspects of the project.
Other
work
In addition to software development, Hill writes extensively. He
has been published in academic books and conference proceedings and
in magazines, newsletters, and online journals. He is the author of
the Free Software Project Management HOWTO, the canonical document
on managing FOSS projects, and has published academic work on FOSS
from anthropological, sociological, management and software
engineering perspectives and has written and spoken about
intellectual property, copyright, and collaboration more
generally.
Hill has worked for several years as a consultant for FOSS
projects specializing in coordinating releases of software as free
or open software and structuring development efforts to encourage
community involvement. He spends a significant amount of his time
traveling and giving talks on FOSS and intellectual property
primarily in Europe and North America.
Previous to his current positions, Hill pursued research full
time as a graduate researcher at the MIT Media Laboratory. At the
lab, he has worked in both the Electronic Publishing and Computing
Culture groups on collaborative writing and decision-making
software. One project, Selectricity is an award-winning voting tool
which reserved prizes and grants from MTV and Cisco.
He serves on the advisory board of the Wikimedia
Foundation[8], the Open Knowledge Foundation and
the Ubuntu Community Council. He is on the
board of the Free Software Foundation.
References
- ^ Hill, Benjamin. "Contacting Benjamin Mako Hill". http://mako.cc/contact.html. Retrieved
2007-07-16.
- ^
"FSF - Leadership". Free
Software Foundation. 2007-06-25. https://www.fsf.org/about/leadership.html. Retrieved
2007-07-16.
- ^
"GNU speakers". Free
Software Foundation. 2007-07-17. http://www.gnu.org/people/speakers.html. Retrieved
2007-07-17.
- ^
http://mako.cc/fun/
- ^
Akkerman, Wichert (2003-02-22). "Result for vote regarding
new members for the board of directors". http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-announce/2003/000044.html. Retrieved
2007-07-16.
- ^
Hill, Benjamin (2006-07-05). "Stepping Down From Software
in the Public Interest, Inc.". http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20060705-00. Retrieved
2007-07-16.
- ^
Graham, David (2004-09-07). "Minutes for August 10th,
2004". http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-announce/2004/000100.html. Retrieved
2007-07-16.
- ^
Beesley, Angela; Devouard, Florence;
KIZU, Naoko; Möller, Erik; Dillen, Oscar; Moreau, Nicholas;
Kaganer, Paul; Pathoschild; Aprabhala. "Advisory Board". http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board. Retrieved
2007-07-16.
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