An author, technology and copyright researcher, activist, and consultant, Hill is currently working full time on research into the application of technologies and lessons learned in free software toward the production of other types of creative works.

Benjamin Mako Hill is an author, technology and copyright researcher, activist, and consultant. He is currently working full time on research into the application of technologies and lessons learned in free software toward the production of other types of creative works at the MIT Media Laboratory. He has been an leader, developer, and contributor to the free software community for more than a decade as part of the Debian and Ubuntu projects. He is the author of the Debian GNU/Linux Bible and the Official Ubuntu book.

Hill is known within the hacker community for his essays and innovative package-name poetry. He commonly speaks about free software priniciples and practice, free software development methodology, project management techniques, and best practices, issues around financing voluntary free software projects, free software and free culture and extending free software ideas to the world beyond software.

He currently works in the Computing Culture group of the Media Lab at MIT, the Wikimedia Foundation advisory board, and Ubuntu Community Council. He is on the board of the Free Software Foundation, a speaker for the GNU Project, and the board of Software Freedom International (the organization that organizes Software Freedom Day). Hill was on the board of Software in the Public Interest from March 2003 until July 2006, serving as the organisation's vice-president from August 2004.