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Jan-Christoph Borchardt

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Jan-Christoph Borchardt
Jan-Christoph Borchardt at GUADEC 2015
Born (1989-05-03) 3 May 1989 (age 35)
NationalityGerman
Occupationopen source designer
Known forownCloud, Nextcloud, Terms of Service; Didn't Read
Websitejancborchardt.net

Jan-Christoph Borchardt (born 3 May 1989 in Minden, Germany) is a German open source interaction designer. He is primarily known for his work on Open Source Design, Terms of Service; Didn't Read, ownCloud, and now Nextcloud.[1][2]

Open Source Design

In his bachelor thesis "Usability in Free Software" he argues that "For a software to truly be free, people need to be able to easily use it without help". His thesis has the subtitle "Freedom 4: The freedom to use the program effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily", a reference to the four freedoms of free software.[3][4]

He is a cofounder of Open Source Design, "a community of designers and developers pushing more open design processes and improving the user experience and interface design of open source software".[5][6] To that effect he has been responsible for the introduction of the “Open Source Design room” in 2015 at FOSDEM as well as FOSSASIA in 2016.[7]

In 2013 he was a lecturer for Design in Open Source Software at the nationally recognised University of Design, Art and Media "Merz Akademie" in Stuttgart, Germany.[8]

Free software

Borchardt contributes to several open-source projects and communities. This includes Shotwell (software),[9] Diaspora (social network),[10] elementary OS[11] as well as the Nextcloud and ownCloud projects.[1]

In 2012 he co-founded Terms of Service; Didn't Read,[12] a community project aiming to analyze and grade the terms of service and privacy policies of major internet sites and services.[13] He is co-chair of the W3C Unhosted Web Community Group.[14]

Based on his belief that contributing to open-source is already difficult enough[15] he is also a cofounder of the Stuttgart JS and Tel Aviv JS meetups. As well as several other community events such as AfricaHackTrip.[6]

ownCloud and Nextcloud

Since early 2011 he has been the lead designer of ownCloud.[16][17] As of 2016 after the fork of ownCloud into Nextcloud he is employed by Nextcloud as design lead.[18]

References

  1. ^ a b "GitHub profile of Borchardt". Github.
  2. ^ "Twitter profile of Borchardt". Twitter.
  3. ^ Borchardt. "Usability in Free Software". Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  4. ^ Free Software Foundation (1 September 2015). "What is free software?". Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  5. ^ "Open Source Design". opensourcedesign.net.
  6. ^ a b "Personal web page of Borchardt". Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  7. ^ "fossasia.org: 2016 program". Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  8. ^ "Merz Akademie: Dozenten". Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  9. ^ Borchardt (9 August 2010). "Shotwell usability testing". Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  10. ^ Patrick Beuth (28 August 2012). "Die Gründer von Diaspora ziehen sich zurück". Die Zeit. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  11. ^ "Elementary Team Page". elementary.io. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  12. ^ "About: Terms of Service; Didn't Read". Terms of Service; Didn't Read. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  13. ^ Luckerson, Victor (10 August 2012). "Facebook, Google, Others Have Privacy Policies Explained on New Website". Time. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  14. ^ "Unhosted Web Community Group". Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  15. ^ Jan-Christoph Borchardt [@jancborchardt] (7 June 2016). "Getting involved in open source is difficult enough. So - be welcoming - have a Code of Conduct - don't be afraid to exclude toxic people :)" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  16. ^ "6 ownCloud User Interaction Design Principles". ownCloud. 27 January 2016. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  17. ^ Arthur Schiwon (21 April 2011). "First ownCloud Sprint". KDE. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  18. ^ Sebastian Grüner (2 June 2016). "Community-Fork und neues Unternehmen". Golem.de. Retrieved 17 September 2016.