

ThoughtWorks Mourns Colleague Aaron Swartz, Responds to MIT’s Statement - ABS
http://www.thoughtworks.com/news/thoughtworks-mourns-aaron-swartz

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benwikler
As a close friend of Aaron's who was on the email chain between ThoughtWorks
and his family about this statement, I can tell you that marketing played no
role in this. There is intense, genuine, sadness and anger there about what
happened, from the top down. Having "About ThoughtWorks" on the page is an
oversight if anything. A team of engineers has been working through the night
to build <http://rememberaaronsw.com>, which is a beautiful tribute to him--
even the _content_ is open-source, kept in a github repo rather than a
proprietary database. And TW was very concerned to support the family's
wishes. I'm proud of them.

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jibjaba
Thoughtworks using any opportunity to market themselves as usual. I hated
working there.

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ramblerman
Call me crude, but this is just a thinly veiled ad for thoughtworks attached
to the tragic topic of the day

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bbyars
Should we have said nothing? For the past several months Aaron has led the
development of an online petition application working with several senior
programmers at ThoughtWorks for a project we paid for ourselves, because we
believed in his cause, and we believed in Aaron. Friends of Aaron who worked
with him built rememberaaronsw.com because they are hurt and they wanted to
honor the man in the best way they knew how. This wasn't a group of people
trying to capitalize on a public figure. This was his friends and colleagues.

I'm sorry if this came off the wrong way to you, but you should realize that
the message of internet freedom doesn't necessarily help us sell our services
in a lot of places.

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sokoloff
For me, that last paragraph ("About Thoughtworks") is what left a poor taste
in my mouth. Up until that point, I personally thought it was in good taste.
If someone doesn't know who ThoughtWorks is and needs to know, I assure you
that they'll find it via a search engine. I'd also drop the contacts phone
numbers as well.

The addition of that About TW paragraph, no matter how "standard" in a PR
setting, is incredibly inappropriate in my view and makes it appear that you
are taking the occasion of an employee's suicide to market ThoughtWorks. Don't
do that.

~~~
candeira
Try to see it from the other side. The "About Thoughtworks" is just how
companies talk.

The fact that it looks exactly like an official ThoughtWorks PR broadside
makes it even clearer which side the company is on. No "this is the private
opinion of colleagues/friends", but "this is how strongly the company feels
about this".

I say well done.

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teyc
The Department of Justice used TOS-violations to prosecute Aaron for wire-
fraud. Perhaps we should all add a bit of T.O.S. to our sites to warn visitors
from DOJ that that they are not permitted to access our sites, and further
violations will be reported.

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swanson
You can submit your own via pull request:
<https://github.com/rememberaaronsw/rememberaaronsw>

