He authored the RSS spec at age 14. He may not be the greatest prodigy, but as far as I can tell he's one of the greater prodigies. I do not think it is a hyperbole at all to label him the 'greatest prodigy' of our generation.
He made great contributions in the effort of making information free, with his work on the commons and all. That is a profoundly big endeavor that pushes humanity forword, do not be so quick to look past that.
Basically, it seems like the original RSS spec (RSS 0.9) was authored by two guys at Netscape, and released in March 1999, followed by RSS 0.91 in July 1999.
At this point, it looks like Netscape lost interest in RSS, and the project was forked into two competing versions, one lead by Dave Winer, and the other by the RSS-DEV Working Group. Dave Winer published the specs RSS 0.91 (different to Netscape's), 0.92, 0.93, .94 and then 2.0 between 2000-2002.
In August 2000, a competing fork was started by Rael Dornfest, who posted a draft of RSS 1.0, which appears to have been written by himself. He asked for interested parties to join a working group, of which Aaron became a member. This group became known as the RSS-DEV Working Group, and 1.0 was published in December 2000.
It's hard to say how much involvement Aaron had in this working group (I haven't read through the archives), but RSS had certainly existed for some time before Aaron became involved.
I think the broader point is that lionizing Swartz and demonizing Ortiz turns the whole episode into a morality play in which we want to see Ortiz lynched because Jesus was crucified. The issues raised are systemic issues and require systemic solutions, in the long term. Focusing on the individuals involved obscures that. If all that happens is that Ortiz is scapegoated by the DOJ, then we'll have failed to capitalize on the moment to enact real, useful change.
He made great contributions in the effort of making information free, with his work on the commons and all. That is a profoundly big endeavor that pushes humanity forword, do not be so quick to look past that.