Jan-Christoph Borchardt

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]

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

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. "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. "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.
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