Jan-Christoph Borchardt
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Jan-Christoph Borchardt | |
|---|---|
 Jan-Christoph Borchardt at GUADEC 2015 | |
| Born | 3 May 1989 |
| Occupation | open source designer |
| Known for | ownCloud, Nextcloud, Terms of Service; Didn't Read |
| Website | jancborchardt.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]
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]