Mitch Kapor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mitch Kapor
Born
November 1, 1950 (age 63)
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Known for Lotus 1-2-3 and co-founder of TheElectronic Frontier
Foundation
Mitchell David Kapor (born November 1, 1950[1][2]) is the founder of Lotus
Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3.[1][3] He is also a co-founder of
the Electronic Frontier Foundation and was the first chair of theMozilla Foundation.[1]
Contents
[hide]
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1 Early life and education

2 Career

3 Personal life

4 Articles
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5 Bibliography
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6 See also
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7 References
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8 External links
Early life and education[edit]
Kapor was born in Brooklyn, New York, and attended public schools on Long Island in Freeport,
New York,[1] where he graduated from high school in 1967.[1] In 1966, he studied astronomy at
the Summer Science Program. He received aBachelor of Arts from Yale University in 1971 and
studied psychology, linguistics and computer science as part of an interdisciplinary major
in cybernetics.[1][4] Kapor served as Music Director and Program Director at Yale's radio
stationWYBC-FM.
Career[edit]
Kapor worked as head of development at VisiCorp (the marketers of VisiCalc) and selling the
rights to his products VisiPlot and VisiTrend to VisiCorp. Shortly after Kapor left VisiCorp, he codesigned and developed an integrated spreadsheet and graphing program. Kapor founded Lotus
Development Corporation in 1982 withJonathan Sachs, Kapor served as the President (later
Chairman) and Chief Executive Officer of Lotus from 1982 to 1986 and as a Director until 1987.
In 1990, with fellow digital rights activists John Perry Barlow and John Gilmore, he co-founded
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and served as its chairman until 1994. The EFF is an
international non-profit digital rights organization based in the United States. In 1990, Kapor's
company ON Technology introduced the productOn Location.[5] In 2001, Kapor founded the Open
Source Applications Foundation, where he worked on Chandler Project. His involvement with the
Foundation and Project ended in 2008. Kapor became the Chair of the Mozilla Foundation at its
inception in 2003. In 2006, Kapor founded, Foxmarks (later renamed as Xmarks), based in San
Francisco.[citation needed]
Kapor was a founding investor in UUNET Technologies, an early Internet service
provider.[1] Kapor was Chairman of the Commercial Internet eXchange,[6] Kapor was the original
Chair and serves on the Board of Directors of Linden Lab, a San Francisco-based company, and
he is a member of the Advisory Board for the Wikimedia Foundation.[7]
Personal life[edit]
He is married to Freada Kapor Klein and resides in Oakland.[8] Both served on the Board of
Trustees of the Summer Science Program from 2004 to 2006. He was a student of the program in
1966.[9]
Kapor serves on the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation.[10] In May 2009, after
founder Susan P. Crawford had joined the Obama administration, Kapor took over chairmanship
of OneWebDay - the "Earth Day for the internet". In 1996, the Computer History Museum named
him a Museum Fellow "for his development of Lotus 1-2-3, the first major software application for
the IBM PC." He founded the Mitchell Kapor Foundation to support his philanthropic interests in
environmental health. He also co-founded, and is on the board of, the Level Playing Field
Institute, a 501c(3) dedicated to fairness in education and workplaces.[citation needed]
Articles[edit]

"Civil Liberties in Cyberspace" - Scientific American Special Issue on Communications,
Computers, and Networks, September, 1991 [2]

Electronic Newsletter of The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cambridge, MA - scroll down
to Current Legislative and Policy Efforts by Mitchell Kapor. - September 1991

Articles in the EFF archive
Bibliography[edit]

Rosenberg, Scott. Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs,
and One Quest for Transcendent Software (2007) Random HouseISBN 978-1-4000-8246-9,
about Mitch Kapor, collaboration and massive software endeavors, particularly the open
source calendar application Chandler.
See also[edit]

Massively distributed collaboration

List of Jewish American activists
References[edit]
1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g Mitchell Kapor: Biography www.kapor.com. Retrieved July 11, 2011.
2. Jump up^ Computer Hope (2012). Computer history - 1940 - 1960. Computer Hope.
Retrieved on 2012-02-17 from http://www.computerhope.com/history/194060.htm.
3. Jump up^ "The MIT 150: 150 Ideas, Inventions, and Innovators that Helped Shape Our
World". The Boston Globe. May 15, 2011. Retrieved August 8, 2011.
4. Jump up^ Cassidy, Mike (May 5, 2011). "Lotus founder Mitch Kapor sets his sights on fixing
education". Contra Costa Times.
5. Jump up^ New York Times. " New Retrieval Software By On Technology Inc." by John
Markoff. January 22, 1990.
6. Jump up^ Kapor, Mitch. "House Science Subcommittee Testimony". Retrieved 17 May 2013.
7. Jump up^ "Advisory Board". Wikimedia Foundation. January 22, 2007. Retrieved 2007-0128.
8. Jump up^ [1] New York Times, "Oakland: Brooklyn by the Bay", by Matt Haber, May 2, 2014
9. Jump up^ Cringely, Robert X. "Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make
Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date", Addison-Wesley, 1996,
p95
10. Jump up^ Board and Advisory Board Sunlight Foundation, February 14, 2011
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has
media related to Mitch
Kapor.

Mitch Kapor's weblog archives

Inside Mitch Kapor's World
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Mitch Kapor's Why Wikipedia is the next big thing

Wikimania 2006 bio

How to build a successful company, Mitch speaking at Stanford (podcast & video)

Mitch Kapor interviewed on the TV show Triangulation on the TWiT.tv network