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Who are your tech heroes?
Thursday, May 14, 2009 by Dave Winer.
This question came up in a conference call earlier today and I thought it would be useful to open it up publicly. 
1. Someone who has made largely selfless contributions to open technology -- i.e. tech that people can reuse without limits or fees. Examples would be BitTorrent or HTTP.
2. Someone who you think would "do the right thing" whatever that is, most of the time. That is, someone you trust.
Caveat: No one is perfect. You're not saying your hero is a saint. Their contribution could have been amends for past mistakes. It should be someone who has made a major contribution without asking for much in return.
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Dave Winer, 54, pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in Berkeley, California.
"The protoblogger." - NY Times.
"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.
One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.
"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.
"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.
"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.
Dave Winer
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.Last update: 5/14/2009; 3:41:59 PM Pacific. "It's even worse than it appears."
