EFF: Bassel Khartabil, In Memoriam

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reportsthat Bassel Khartabil, Syrian open source developer, blogger,entrepreneur, hackerspace founder, and free culture advocate, was executedby the Syrian authorities. "Bassel was a central figure in theglobal free culture movement, connecting it and promoting it to Syria'semerging tech community as it existed before the country was ransacked bycivil war. He co-founded Aiki Lab, Syria's first hackerspace, in Damascusin 2010. He was a contributor to Mozilla's Firefox browser and the Syrianlead for Creative Commons. His influence went beyond Syria, however: he wasa key attendee at the Middle East's bloggers' conferences, and played avital role in the negotiations in Doha in 2010 that led to a commonlanguage for discussing fair use and copyright across the Arab-speakingworld." (Thanks to Paul Wise)