Aaron Swartz, a wizardly programmer who as a teenager helped develop
code that delivered ever-changing Web content to users and who later
became a steadfast crusader to make that information freely available,
was found dead on Friday in his New York apartment.
An uncle, Michael Wolf, said that Mr. Swartz, 26, had apparently hanged
himself, and that a friend of Mr. Swartz’s had discovered the body.
At 14, Mr. Swartz helped create RSS, the nearly ubiquitous tool that
allows users to subscribe to online information. He later became an Internet folk hero,
pushing to make many Web files free and open to the public. But in July
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