Welcome to my home page. The sign (ja) indicates its contents are mostly written in Japanese.

About myself

My name is Masayuki Hatta (Masayuki is the given name, Hatta is the family name). I was born in July 31th, 1979, and currently live with my family in the suburb of Tokyo, Japan. My bio entry in Japanese Wikipedia (ja). I was one of government-funded AFS exchange students, and lived in Hopewell Junction, NY, USA in 1997-8.
mhatta's faceI received a BA in economics (2002) and a MA in economics from the University of Tokyo (2004). I was pursuing my Ph.D. in economics at Graduate School of Economics, the University of Tokyo between 2004-2009. After serving as a research fellow at Institue of Intellectual Property (2010-2011), now I am an assistant professor at Surugadai University in Hanno, Saitama. I am also a visiting research fellow at GLOCOM(Global Comunication Centor), International University of Japan.
My research field is generally called organizational studies, and I am particularly interested in the process of collaborative knowledge development. One of my main arena is so-called open source software development process and licensing schemes. I am also interested in the economic analysis of law, especially its application to the system of intellectual property laws such as copyright or patent. Recently, I am researching so-called hacktivism and its impact on our society.

Activities

In my free time, I am involved with the following activities.

Debian-related

I have been a Debian GNU/Linux user since ca. 1997, became a member of Debian JP Project in 1998, and have been an official developer of Debian Project since 2000. Debian Packages overview will show you what I maintain now.
Besides being a package maintainer, I translated Debian New Maintainers' Guide into Japanese. Also, I had been contributing a monthly column entitled Debian Tsu-shin (Debian Letters in English) to (now defunct) Open Source Magazine from 2002 to 2006. For a while I served as one of Application Managers for Debian New Maintainer Process.

Free (Libre) Software-related

I have been heavily involved with the Free (Libre) Software movement since around 1998. I translated most of GNU webpages into Japanese, including GNU GPL / LGPL / FDL. Once I served as the chief translation coordinator at GNU Project and one of the members of Discussion committee D on GPLv3 Revision Process. I am currently one of the GNU webmasters.
I received the Linux Conference 2002 OSDL Award for my article about the concept and working of Copyleft. Since then, I served as a member of programming committee for Linux Conference (ja).
I am the current maintainer of GNU a2ps.

Open Source-related

Personally I prefer the term "Free Software" to "Open Source", but I translated The Open Source Definition into Japanese (ja). I organized an annual conference called Open Source Way from 2002 to 2005 and a member of Open Source Group Japan (OSG-JP).
Besides, as a member of Translation team for Japanese at Translation Project, I maintain several Japanese message catalog (ja.po) for free software.
I have contributed several articles or comments on Open Source to renowned Japanese magazines or newspapers. Also I have been invited and given lectures or talks on Open Source at various kind of occasions.

Hacktivism-related

I was one of a handful people in Japan who realized the importance of Wikileaks and hacktivism as early as 2009. Since then, I gave numerous lectures or talks about hacktivism, and wrote a chapter in a book about Wikileaks (see below).

Music-related

I love music, especially Jazz. Besides being an amateur Jazz pianist, I am a member of Jazz Discography Project and maintain discographies for several geniuses, including Bud Powell, Lennie Tristano and Phineas Newborn, Jr. I was one of the new disc reviewers for the Jazz Hihyo (Jazz Critique in English) magazine for a while and was a member of Jazz Journalist Association. Here is the list of my Jazz CD collection and Rock CD collection (not maintained anymore).
Recently, I started an Internet Radio station called Com-post Radio(active), which mainly plays Jazz.

Publications

I co-authored the following books:

Economics/Management Theory-related

Software-related

Hacktivism-related

Music-related

  • Jazz "Meien": The Best CD ("Legendary Performances" in Jazz: The Best CDs in English), Bessatsu Takarajima 1004, Takarajima-sha, 2004
I co-supervised the Japanese translation of the following books:

Contact

In case you want to reach me, please use e-mail; my e-mail address is mhatta at mhatta.org, with replacing "at" with "@". I am trying hard to respond your mail as quickly as possible, but recently I get tons of e-mails I need to write back everyday, so please bear some delay. If you do not get any response from me within two weeks, try another address.

You might catch me on Identi.ca, Twitter, or FriendFeed (ja). Also, I joined several social network services such as Mixi (ja) or Facebook.