Benjamin Mako Hill

Benjamin Mako Hill is the kind of figure who shapes the tools millions of us use without most people ever knowing his name. As a free software activist and developer woven into Debian and Ubuntu, plus the author of multiple technical manuals, he turned open collaboration into both craft and creed. What interests me is the blend of engineer and writer, someone equally comfortable shipping code and explaining why software freedom matters. The Hampshire and MIT background underlines a mind that takes ideas seriously. In a tech world obsessed with valuations, his commitment to shared knowledge over personal fortune feels quietly radical, and I respect it enormously.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Benjamin Mako Hill

Name (Japanese)

ベンジャミン・マコ・ヒル

Reading

べんじゃみん・まこ・ひる

Born

December 2, 1980 (age 45)

Origin

Seattle, Washington, United States

Occupation

assistant professor / engineer / non-fiction writer / computer scientist / researcher

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Monkey

University

Hampshire College

Awards & achievements

• 2007 SPARC Innovator Award

• Official sitehttps://mako.cc/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin%20Mako%20Hill
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%99%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%9F%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%9E%E3%82%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%92%E3%83%AB
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49656

Tags

• Washington
• assistant professor
• engineer
• non-fiction writer

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.