Mitch Kapor
Encyclopedia
Mitchell David Kapor is the founder of Lotus Development
Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3
. He is also a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
and was the first chair of the Mozilla Foundation
. He has been involved in a number of other Internet-oriented organizations.
, where he graduated from high school in 1967. In 1966, he studied astronomy
at the Summer Science Program
. He received a Bachelor of Arts
from Yale University
in 1971 and studied psychology
, linguistics
and computer science
as part of an interdisciplinary major in cybernetics
. Kapor served as Music Director and Program Director at Yale's radio station WYBC-FM
.
During the 1970s, Kapor was employed as a radio
disc jockey
at WHCN-FM, a commercial progressive rock
station based in Hartford, Connecticut
. It was also in this period that he became interested in Transcendental Meditation
, going on to teach the philosophy in Cambridge, Massachusetts
(where he also worked as a low-level computer programmer) and Fairfield, Iowa
. In 1978, he graduated with a master's degree
in psychology
from Campus-Free College (later renamed Beacon College
) in Boston
. Kapor subsequently began a career as a mental health
counselor at New England Memorial Hospital in Stoneham, Massachusetts
.
In 1980, Kapor left his counseling career to attend the Master's of Science in Management program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
's Sloan School of Management
, but did not graduate.
in 1982 with Jonathan Sachs
, who was responsible for technical architecture and implementation, and created Lotus 1-2-3. Kapor served as the President (later Chairman) and Chief Executive Officer of Lotus from 1982 to 1986 and as a Director until 1987. In 1983, Lotus' first year of operations, the company achieved revenues of $53,000,000 and had a successful public offering. In 1984 the company tripled in revenue to $156,000,000. The number of employees grew to over a thousand by 1985.
Lotus' first product was presentation software for the Apple II
known as Lotus Executive Briefing System. Kapor founded Lotus after working 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, Sachs and he designed and developed an integrated spreadsheet and graphing program. Even though IBM and VisiCorp collaborated on VisiCalc
for the PC and VisiCalc shipped simultaneously with the PC, Lotus had a superior product. Lotus released Lotus 1-2-3
in January 1983. The name referred to the three ways the product could be used: as a spreadsheet, a graphics package, and a database manager. The last function was seldom used. 1-2-3 was the most powerful spreadsheet available in the new PC-compatible market; sales were enormous, turning Lotus into the largest independent software vendor in the world almost overnight. The business plan had called for $1,000,000 in sales in the first year, but the actual results were $53,000,000.
Kapor was also the fundamental architect of the "free-form" database application, Lotus Agenda
.
In October 1984 Jim Manzi was named President, and in April 1986 he was named as CEO, succeeding Kapor, who had become inactive in the company.
and John Gilmore, he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation
, and served as its chairman until 1994. The EFF is a non-profit civil liberties organization working in the public interest to protect privacy, free expression, and access to public resources and information online, as well as to promote responsibility in new media.
, one of the earliest commercial Internet service providers.
at its inception in 2003. 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. Kapor was the original Chair and is currently on the Board of Directors of Linden Lab
, a San Francisco-based company which created the popular virtual world Second Life
, and a member of the Advisory Board for the Wikimedia Foundation
.
had joined the Obama administration, Kapor took over chairmanship of OneWebDay
- the "Earth Day for the internet".
introduced their new product On Location, an application designed for the Macintosh that contained an indexing system that permit quick retrieval and display of text on the Mac's hard disk. "We think we're being cagey by bringing it out on the Mac first," Kapor said. "It's a richer medium than MS-DOS, and if we have a hot product in the Mac market, it will be easier to get into the PC market."
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.
In 2006, Kapor founded his latest startup, Foxmarks (later renamed as Xmarks), based in San Francisco.
and resides in San Francisco. 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. He is allergic to cats and gluten.
Lotus Software
Lotus Software is a software company with headquarters in Westford, Massachusetts...
Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software . It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.-Beginnings:...
. He is also a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
and was the first chair of the Mozilla Foundation
Mozilla Foundation
The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls trademarks and other intellectual property...
. He has been involved in a number of other Internet-oriented organizations.
Early life
Kapor was born in Brooklyn, New York, and attended public schools on Long Island in Freeport, New YorkFreeport, New York
Freeport is a village in the town of Hempstead, Nassau County, New York, USA, on the South Shore of Long Island. The population was 42,860 at the 2010 census. A settlement since the 1640s, it was once an oystering community and later a resort popular with the New York City theater community...
, where he graduated from high school in 1967. In 1966, he studied astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
at the Summer Science Program
Summer Science Program
The Summer Science Program is an intense six-week summer program for intellectually talented high school students. The program is based on a collaborative research project in celestial mechanics. Students study astronomy, physics, spherical trigonometry, and calculus while working to take...
. He received a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1971 and studied psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
as part of an interdisciplinary major in cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
. Kapor served as Music Director and Program Director at Yale's radio station WYBC-FM
WYBC-FM
WYBC-FM is an Urban Adult Contemporary music formatted radio station in New Haven, Connecticut, on the campus of Yale University. The station is operated through Cox Radio....
.
During the 1970s, Kapor was employed as a radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
disc jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
at WHCN-FM, a commercial progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
station based in Hartford, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
. It was also in this period that he became interested in Transcendental Meditation
Transcendental Meditation
Transcendental Meditation refers to the Transcendental Meditation technique, a specific form of mantra meditation, and to the Transcendental Meditation movement, a spiritual movement...
, going on to teach the philosophy in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
(where he also worked as a low-level computer programmer) and Fairfield, Iowa
Fairfield, Iowa
Fairfield is a city and the county seat of Jefferson County, Iowa, United States. The population was 9,464 in the 2010 census, a decline from 9,509 in the 2000 census. - History :...
. In 1978, he graduated with a master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
from Campus-Free College (later renamed Beacon College
Beacon College
Beacon College is a small private college for students with learning disabilities located in Leesburg, Florida, United States. It offers Associate of Arts and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Human Services, Liberal Studies and Computer Information Systems...
) in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
. Kapor subsequently began a career as a mental health
Mental health
Mental health describes either a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and...
counselor at New England Memorial Hospital in Stoneham, Massachusetts
Stoneham, Massachusetts
Stoneham is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Its population was 21,437 at the 2010 census, down from 22,219 in 2000. The town is the birthplace of Olympic figure skating medalist Nancy Kerrigan and is the home of the Stone Zoo.- History :...
.
In 1980, Kapor left his counseling career to attend the Master's of Science in Management program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
's Sloan School of Management
MIT Sloan School of Management
The MIT Sloan School of Management is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts....
, but did not graduate.
Lotus
Kapor founded Lotus Development CorporationLotus Software
Lotus Software is a software company with headquarters in Westford, Massachusetts...
in 1982 with Jonathan Sachs
Jonathan Sachs
Jonathan Sachs was the programmer who co-founded Lotus Development Corporation with Mitch Kapor in 1982 and created the first version of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program...
, who was responsible for technical architecture and implementation, and created Lotus 1-2-3. Kapor served as the President (later Chairman) and Chief Executive Officer of Lotus from 1982 to 1986 and as a Director until 1987. In 1983, Lotus' first year of operations, the company achieved revenues of $53,000,000 and had a successful public offering. In 1984 the company tripled in revenue to $156,000,000. The number of employees grew to over a thousand by 1985.
Lotus' first product was presentation software for the Apple II
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
known as Lotus Executive Briefing System. Kapor founded Lotus after working as head of development at VisiCorp
VisiCorp
VisiCorp was an early personal computer software publisher. Its most famous products are VisiOn and VisiCalc.It was founded in 1976 by Dan Fylstra and Peter R. Jennings as Personal Software, and first published Jennings' Microchess program for the MOS Technology KIM-1 computer, and later Commodore...
(the marketers of VisiCalc) and selling the rights to his products VisiPlot and VisiTrend to VisiCorp.
Shortly after Kapor left VisiCorp, Sachs and he designed and developed an integrated spreadsheet and graphing program. Even though IBM and VisiCorp collaborated on VisiCalc
VisiCalc
VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool...
for the PC and VisiCalc shipped simultaneously with the PC, Lotus had a superior product. Lotus released Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software . It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.-Beginnings:...
in January 1983. The name referred to the three ways the product could be used: as a spreadsheet, a graphics package, and a database manager. The last function was seldom used. 1-2-3 was the most powerful spreadsheet available in the new PC-compatible market; sales were enormous, turning Lotus into the largest independent software vendor in the world almost overnight. The business plan had called for $1,000,000 in sales in the first year, but the actual results were $53,000,000.
Kapor was also the fundamental architect of the "free-form" database application, Lotus Agenda
Lotus Agenda
Agenda is a DOS-based personal information manager, designed by Mitch Kapor, Ed Belove and Jerry Kaplan, and marketed by Lotus Software.Lotus Agenda is a "free-form" information manager: the information need not be structured at all before it is entered into the database...
.
In October 1984 Jim Manzi was named President, and in April 1986 he was named as CEO, succeeding Kapor, who had become inactive in the company.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
In 1990, with fellow digital rights activists John Perry BarlowJohn Perry Barlow
John Perry Barlow is an American poet and essayist, a retired Wyoming cattle rancher, and a cyberlibertarian political activist who has been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He is also a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and a founding member of the Electronic...
and John Gilmore, he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
, and served as its chairman until 1994. The EFF is a non-profit civil liberties organization working in the public interest to protect privacy, free expression, and access to public resources and information online, as well as to promote responsibility in new media.
UUNET Technologies
Mitch Kapor was a founding investor in UUNET TechnologiesUUNET
UUNET founded in 1987, was one of the largest Internet service providers and one of the nine Tier 1 networks. It was based in Northern Virginia and was the first commercial Internet service provider...
, one of the earliest commercial Internet service providers.
Mozilla Foundation
Kapor was the Chair of the Mozilla FoundationMozilla Foundation
The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls trademarks and other intellectual property...
at its inception in 2003. 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. Kapor was the original Chair and is currently on the Board of Directors of Linden Lab
Linden Lab
Linden Research, Inc., d/b/a Linden Lab, is a privately held American Internet company that is best known as the creator of Second Life....
, a San Francisco-based company which created the popular virtual world Second Life
Second Life
Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
, and a member of the Advisory Board for the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
.
OneWebDay
In May 2009, after founder Susan P. CrawfordSusan P. Crawford
Susan P. Crawford was until December 2009 President Barack Obama's Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy...
had joined the Obama administration, Kapor took over chairmanship of OneWebDay
OneWebDay
OneWebDay is an annual day of Internet celebration and awareness held on September 22. The stated goal of founder Susan P. Crawford is for OneWebDay to foster and make visible a global constituency that cares about the future of the Internet.- History :...
- the "Earth Day for the internet".
Other startups
In 1990, Kapor's new company ON TechnologyON Technology
ON Technology was a software company in the United States. It was formed by Mitch Kapor after his departure from Lotus Software. The original plan of the business was to build an object-oriented PC desktop environment providing a variety of applications...
introduced their new product On Location, an application designed for the Macintosh that contained an indexing system that permit quick retrieval and display of text on the Mac's hard disk. "We think we're being cagey by bringing it out on the Mac first," Kapor said. "It's a richer medium than MS-DOS, and if we have a hot product in the Mac market, it will be easier to get into the PC market."
In 2001, Kapor founded the Open Source Applications Foundation
Open Source Applications Foundation
The Open Source Applications Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 2002 by Mitch Kapor whose purpose is to effect widespread adoption of free software/open-source software.-OSAF Mission:The mission of the OSAF is stated this way:...
, where he worked on Chandler Project
Chandler (PIM)
Chandler is a personal information management software suite described by its developers as a "Note-to-Self Organizer" designed for personal and small-group task management and calendaring. It is free software, previously released under the GNU General Public License, and now released under the...
. His involvement with the Foundation and Project ended in 2008.
In 2006, Kapor founded his latest startup, Foxmarks (later renamed as Xmarks), based in San Francisco.
Personal life
He is married to Freada Kapor KleinFreada Kapor Klein
Freada Kapor Klein, Ph.D. is a pioneer in the field of organizational development and human resources and diversity consulting, as co-founder of the first organization in the U.S. to offer comprehensive services, training, and consultation on the topic of sexual harassment to both the private and...
and resides in San Francisco. Both served on the Board of Trustees of the Summer Science Program
Summer Science Program
The Summer Science Program is an intense six-week summer program for intellectually talented high school students. The program is based on a collaborative research project in celestial mechanics. Students study astronomy, physics, spherical trigonometry, and calculus while working to take...
from 2004 to 2006. He was a student of the program in 1966. He is allergic to cats and gluten.
Articles
- "Civil Liberties in Cyberspace" - Scientific American Special Issue on Communications, Computers, and Networks, September, 1991 http://www.eff.org/Misc/Publications/Mitch_Kapor/cyberliberties_kapor.article
- 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
External links
- OSAF community weblog
- Mitch Kapor's blog
- Mitch Kapor's weblog archives
- Inside Mitch Kapor's World
- Level Playing Field Institute
- Mitch Kapor's Why Wikipedia is the next big thing
- Wikimania 2006 bio
- Foxmarks
- How to build a successful company, Mitch speaking at Stanford (podcast & video)
- Open Source Development and Distribution of Digital Information Webcast of the entire course at UC Berkeley