Joe Armstrong is mainly known as the father of Erlang, and the Erlang family has always been relatively small and closely knit. Anyone whose first Erlang conference (usually Erlang Factory, Erlang User Conference, or CodeBEAM) had Joe in the attendance would have a similar reaction. There was a feeling of awe about how accessible the community was. Here you were, and big names like Joe and Robert—who everyone knew by their first names—were right around the same room, friendly, and willing to talk to anybody. You'd feel like you were welcome no matter who you were.

Today, we've learned of Joe's passing away. I wasn't a super close friend of Joe, but I have known him and talked with him at various conferences over the last ten years or so. He's unsurprisingly been a huge influence in my career, and so I thought I should write this little post about him and his impact. My words can't give justice to the man he was, but I felt I needed to write this up.

Peter was widely known as founder of Scribus, the Libre Graphics Meeting and enthusiastic contributor to countless other Free Software projects. For openSUSE he took over responsibility as an active member of our package review team and has served as openSUSE Board member twice, from 2011-2012 and 2014-2016. Peter passed away a week ago after lengthy battle with cancer, he is survived by his wife Pauline and his daughter Stella. His obituary mentions ways to honor his life.

We will always remember Peter as fellow tinkerer, with an boundless passion to understand the inner workings and meanings of software and people. Farewell Peter, you’ll be missed by the openSUSE Community.

Obituary: Peter T. Linnell

The Debian Project sadly announces that it has lost a member of its community. Lucy Wayland passed recently.

Lucy was a contributor within the Cambridge (UK) Debian community, helping to organise the Cambridge Mini-DebConf since several years.

She was a strong fighter for diversity and inclusion, and participated in the creation of the Debian Diversity Team, working on increasing the visibility of under-represented groups and providing support with respect to diversity issues within the community.

The Debian Project honours her good work and strong dedication to Debian and Free Software. Lucy's contributions will not be forgotten, and the high standards of her work will continue to serve as an inspiration to others.

Dear PNG users, developers and contributors,

I am deeply saddened to inform you that Glenn Randers-Pehrson, our
long-time group lead, passed away last weekend, following a long and
painful illness.

Glenn is one of the original designers of the PNG format, and a
co-founder of the PNG Development Group, back in the mid-90's. He took
good care of the PNG Specification, as a contributing author for PNG
version 1.0, and as the main editor for all of the subsequent editions
through PNG 1.1 and 1.2, until the current W3C/ISO/IEC standard PNG
Specification, Second Edition. In addition, all of the related
Specifications, i.e., the registered PNG extensions, and the companion
MNG Specification version 1.0 and JNG Specification version 1.0, had
Glenn at the front as the main editor and moderator-in-chief.