Does shipping have an Aaron Swartz? Maybe it needs one

This is one of those articles – an obituary in fact – that you read, then re-read with growing attention and which sets you thinking. You think ‘what a waste of a brilliant brain’ but I don’t know enough about him to make judgements about that.

What I wondered was – what would a shipping industry version of this guy look like? Would he get anywhere? Would anyone listen to him?

Has anyone in maritime IT invented anything anything as innovative or useful as RSS? How about ECDIS or S-100? One might say AIS is a neat piece of technology but of course the US Air Force paid for that and shipping got to use it.

Mostly I keep being drawn back to the concluding comment – that people like Aaron develop standards for free that companies take up and use to create profits. Some are winners, some pay the price of their idealism.

Read the Bloomberg Businessweek article here.