Swartz

The opening quotation is from Aaron Swartz’s Guerilla Open Access Manifesto.

Aaron Swartz built RSS when he was 14. He wrote the code behind Creative Commons licenses. He co-founded Reddit. He created Open Library with the Internet Archive. He downloaded millions of federal court records from PACER and made them public. He led the fight that killed SOPA and PIPA.

In 2011, he downloaded 4.8 million academic articles from JSTOR through MIT's network. Publicly funded research, locked behind paywalls. Federal prosecutors charged him with 13 felony counts — up to 35 years in prison. He was offered six months if he pled guilty. He refused. On January 11, 2013, he was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment. He was 26.

JSTOR had already dropped the matter. MIT said nothing.

Swartz wrote in the same manifesto:

"You have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world."

He was talking about paywalls, but the problem is bigger than paywalls.

There's another kind of lock. When a $200 textbook compresses into 30 pages what needs 300 pages to explain step by step, leaving out the background, examples, and reasoning a beginner needs. When an expert writes for other experts and calls it "education." When the language around a subject is harder than the subject itself. You can put a paper on the internet for free and still make it impossible for most people to understand. That's not sharing. That's a locked door with no handle.

I want to build an open network where anyone can publish what they know, organized in a way that others can actually follow. If you understand something, you can explain it and put it out there. If someone else explains it better, theirs rises to the top. The structure of how knowledge connects — what comes before what, what depends on what — is as important as the knowledge itself. That's what the internet is missing.

Swartz was right. This is early, and I'd rather try than not. If you feel the same way, come build it together.

This is a public-benefit project. Published knowledge should be free to read and obtain. Recognition should come from explaining things well, sharing useful work, and helping correct mistakes. Money should not decide whose explanation is seen or whose judgement counts.