[ Thanks to E5Rebel
for this link. ]
“What makes his death particularly tragic is that his name is
probably only vaguely known, even to people familiar with the areas
he devoted his life to: free etexts and the public domain. In part,
that was because he modest, content with only the barest
recognition of his huge achievements. It was also because he was so
far ahead of his times that there was an unfortunate disconnect
between him and the later generation that built on his trailblazing
early work.“To give an idea of how visionary Hart was, it’s worth bearing
in mind that he began what turned into the free etext library
Project Gutenberg in 1971 – fully 12 years before Richard Stallman
began to formulate his equivalent ideas for free software. Here’s
how I described the rather extraordinary beginnings of Hart’s work
in a feature I wrote in 2006…”