I learned Monday morning that my friend G. Roderick Singleton had passed away, felled by a heart attack. I knew Gerry through OpenOffice.org; he was one of the leads of the Documentation Project and a staunch supporter of OpenOffice.org. At his demise, he and I, along with a few others, had just embarked on a new and interesting project.
Gerry was gruff, grizzled, honest, smart, experienced; never cynical, never inconsiderate. Did the community know that he spent an enormous amount of time caring after his aged and frail parent? We tend to forget that people in the open-source community also have real lives. Gerry's integrity was exemplary, his work inspiring, at least to me. When my wife and I moved to Toronto from Berkeley, he made an effort to introduce me to the local Toronto open-source groups and to make me feel at home; he succeeded. Our schedules, however, made close work difficult, but he tried, all the same, to keep in touch with me, and possessed a quality of patience I hope one day to have.
I will miss him, the community will miss him.
Gerry was gruff, grizzled, honest, smart, experienced; never cynical, never inconsiderate. Did the community know that he spent an enormous amount of time caring after his aged and frail parent? We tend to forget that people in the open-source community also have real lives. Gerry's integrity was exemplary, his work inspiring, at least to me. When my wife and I moved to Toronto from Berkeley, he made an effort to introduce me to the local Toronto open-source groups and to make me feel at home; he succeeded. Our schedules, however, made close work difficult, but he tried, all the same, to keep in touch with me, and possessed a quality of patience I hope one day to have.
I will miss him, the community will miss him.
No comments:
Post a Comment