I’ve compiled this list of blog posts, articles, and writing by and about Aaron Swartz together as someone who has been amazed by what I’ve learned after the online community lost a clearly brilliant and dedicated man. In particular, I’m compiling it because the quantity of material makes it hard to keep up with everything, let alone know where to start.

Obituaries, news coverage

• Internet Activist, a Creator of RSS, Is Dead at 26, Apparently a Suicide: The New York Times

• Internet pioneer and information activist takes his own life: Ars Technica

• Aaron Swartz commits suicide: Piece on Swartz’s death by MIT’s oldest newspaper, The Tech. The paper has compiled its coverage of him since August 2011 at its blog.

Memorials

• Remember Aaron Swartz: A memorial site run by Swartz’s family and partner.

• Aaron is dead.: Tim Berners-Lee posted his tribute to a Worldwide Web Consorium mailing list. Berners-Lee also posted a similar message on Twitter.

• RIP, Aaron Swartz: Cory Doctorow remembers the life and contributions of his friend.

• Prosecutor as bully: Lawrence Lessig, a friend of Swartz’s, lays the blame at the prosecutor’s feet.

• Losing Aaron Swartz: Doc Searls remembers Swartz.

• User talk:AaronSw: Wikipedia editors pay tribute to Swartz, who had thousands of edits and ran for its board of directors.

• Our tribute to Aaron Swartz – #pdftribute: Academics are releasing digital versions of their works as a tribute. Links are scraped and collected here.

• Commons man: The Economist’s short memorial.

Select examples of Swartz’s writings

• If I get hit by a truck…: Unfortunately, Swartz’s instructions for his website, digital assets, and grave have to be executed all too soon.

• HOWTO: Be more productive: Swartz wrote this sensible essay on procrastination and productivity in 2005, which resurfaced on Hacker News yesterday.

• Bake, Don’t Fry: Swartz made the case for static blogs years before generators like Jekyll became popular.

• Who Writes Wikipedia?: Intelligent and terse look at the people behind Wikipedia articles. His findings were in contrast to the accepted wisdom that a few hundred volunteers were mostly responsible for the online encyclopedia. Instead, a wide base of people contribute content, which a small group organizes and polishes.

• Aaron Swartz: Aaron Swartz was one of the many profiled by The Setup on what he used to “get stuff done.”

Archives and collections

• The Aaron Swartz Collection at the Internet Archive: Allows anyone to upload digital materials “appropriate in a memorial collection: emails with him, code archives, photos.”

• Archive of Swartz’s website: Done by psuedoanonymous Hacker News reader Nux who hasn’t yet stated long-term plans for the archive. You can download the source here.

• Archive of Swartz’s quoteblog Again, by Nux. You can download the source here.

Videos

• Memorial program recording: The first part of the program, including messages from Swartz’s partner and his friends and colleagues. The Internet Archive also has a page with the recordings of the memorial in various formats and broken up by speaker.

• How we stopped SOPA: Swartz’s keynote at Freedom to Connect 2012.

• Exclusive: Aaron Swartz’s Partner, Expert Witness Say Prosecutors Unfairly Targeted Dead Activist: Democracy Now! interviews Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Swartz’s partner, and Alex Stamos, a computer security consultant.

• “An Incredible Soul”: Larry Lessig Remembers Aaron Swartz After Cyberactivist’s Suicide Before Trial; Parents Blame Prosecutor: Democracy Now! interviews Lawrence Lessig, Swartz’s friend and fellow copyright reform activist.

Other link compilations

• Losing Aaron Swartz: See the bottom of the post for Doc Searls’ collection of links about Swartz.

• Highest rated stories about Swartz on Hacker News: Link to HNSearch for “aaron swartz,” filtering out stories and ranked by score.

Updates

• January 15, 2013, 11:56 CST: Remove notice about MIT-hosted sites being down. Add links section.

• January 22, 2013, 19:38 CST: Small fixes and add colons after links. Add quoteblog link. Add link to interview.

• January 27, 2013, 13:27 CST: Add link to a site searching through #pdftribute. Add video section.

• February 20, 2013, 21:17 CST: Add links to Democracy Now! programs. Add link to search on HNSearch.

• March 20, 2013, 01:11 CET: Change section header “News stories about his death” to “Obituaries, news coverage.” Fix broken link to HNSearch. Add links for several people to their Wikipedia page.

• June 2, 2013, 10:33, 22: CEST: Fixed some broken links found with linkchecker. Fixed mailto link.

Submissions and corrections are gratefully accepted. You can send them to my email address. To facilitate sharing, I release this blog entry under the public domain, specifically CC0.