Mike Linksvayer is an intellectual freedom and commons proponent, known as a technology entrepreneur, developer and activist from co-founding Bitzi and leadership of Creative Commons. He is

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continu ...

's Policy Director.

Biography

Linksvayer holds a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

from the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

and has worked as a Chief Technical Officer,

Vice President A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on ...

manager Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activities ...

, software developer and consultant. He joined Creative Commons as CTO in April 2003, and held that position until April 2007 when he became vice president. He also co-founded

p2p P2P may refer to: * Pay to play, where money is exchanged for services * Peer-to-peer, a distributed application architecture in computing or networking ** List of P2P protocols * Phenylacetone, an organic compound commonly known as P2P * Poin ...

file sharing company Bitzi, well known for its invention of

magnet links Magnet is a URI scheme that defines the format of magnet links, a de facto standard for identifying files ( URN) by their content, via cryptographic hash value rather than by their location. Although magnet links can be used in a number of con ...

. Former executive director of Creative Commons, Glenn Otis Brown, noted that Mike Linksvayer brought much-needed stability to the organization, comparing his role to that of a drummer in a

band Band or BAND may refer to: Places *Bánd, a village in Hungary *Band, Iran, a village in Urmia County, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Band, Mureș, a commune in Romania *Band-e Majid Khan, a village in Bukan County, West Azerbaijan Province, I ...

. Linksvayer encouraged

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

to use public APIs to share its data, which is already in

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

as government works. He also suggested that scientists and other planetary societies use Creative Commons licenses to disseminate photos and other works so that the public has better access. Following his tenure as vice president, in April 2012 Linksvayer became a part-time Senior Fellow at Creative Commons. Linksvayer also serves on the boards of OpenHatch and Software Freedom Conservancy and chairs the Open Definition Advisory Council. Since 2015, Linksvayer has been GitHub's Director of Policy, addressing public policy issues.

Writing

Linksvayer speaks internationally and writes broadly. On January 30, 2015 he co-authored a whitepaper, "Towards a Design Space for a Commons Provenance System" with Tessa Askamp, Paul Keller, Catharina Maracke, and Maarten Zeinstra. In 2012, he wrote an essay in the essay collection, ''The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State'', edited by

David Bollier David Bollier is an American activist, writer, and blogger who is focused on the commons as a paradigm for re-imagining economics, politics, and culture. He is a director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New E ...

. He contributed to Jono Bacon's

O'Reilly O'Reilly ( ga, Ó Raghallaigh) is a group of families, ultimately all of Irish Gaelic origin, who were historically the kings of East Bréifne in what is today County Cavan. The clan were part of the Connachta's Uí Briúin Bréifne kindred a ...

book, ''The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation'' and also wrote "Using and Sharing Data: the Black Letter, Fine Print, and Reality" for ''The Data Journalism Handbook''. In 2010 he co-authored with Aleksandar Erkalovic, Adam Hyde, Michael Mandiberg, Marta Peirano, Sissu Tarka, Astra Taylor, Alan Toner, and Mushon Zer-Aviv, Collaborative Futures using the novel Booksprint method of producing and releasing an entire book in a week. In 2009, Linksvayer contributed an essay "Free Culture in Relation to Software Freedom" to FSCONS ''Free Beer'', edited by Stian Rødven Eide. In 2008, while at Creative Commons, Linksvayer co-authored a technical document with Ben Adida, Hal Abelson, and Nathan Yergler, "ccREL: The Creative Commons Rights Expression Language."

Personal life

Mike Linksvayer is a

vegan Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal product—particularly in diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. An individual who follows the diet or philosophy is known as a vegan. ...

and follows a low-calorie diet. He was featured in a news story carried by a number of sources suggesting that calorie-restricted diets may extend life span. He lives in Oakland, California.

References

External links

*
World Intellectual Freedom Organization
{{DEFAULTSORT:Linksvayer, Mike Living people Creative Commons University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni American chief technology officers Year of birth missing (living people) GitHub people