Obituary for Janis Jagars (Disastry)
Len Sassaman
was a prolific programmer who made numerous valuable contributions to the
Internet. I am afraid I cannot do his memory justice, having known him
only a short number of years and only through his work on privacy
enhancing programs, but he earned my respect and appreciation for his
achievements in that area.
I first "met" Janis Jagars while I was employed by PGP Security. In
preparation for the release of PGP 7, I located and contacted the people
responsible for other implementations of OpenPGP, in order to set up
interop testing. Janis was working on updating the DOS-aware PGP 2.6.3i
program to work with modern implementations of PGP. His work on that
program, and his presence in the IETF OpenPGP working group, helped to
smooth over a number of PGP compatibility problems. On the PGP newsgroups
and mailing lists, Janis helped many new PGP users get started using email
encryption, and tirelessly answered support questions for privacy-related
programs. To my knowledge, Janis operated the only anonymous remailer to
exist in Latvia.
Janis was, by the original definition, a true Cypherpunk. He believed that
privacy was a right that must not be denied to Internet users, and he
wrote code to help ensure that it could not be.
When he needed a way to easily send encrypted email through Netscape, he
wrote a plugin. When he wanted a way to mount PGPdisk volumes under Linux,
he wrote a conversion tool. When Windows users wanted a pre-compiled
version GnuPG, Janis gave them one. Janis understood that the fight for
Internet privacy must take place at the hands of programmers, and he rose
to the challenge of bring useful privacy-enhancing programs into
existence, and into the hands of the public.
Immediately after the terrorist attacks in September, 2001, I took over
maintenance of the Mixmaster anonymous remailer project. Mixmaster had
been unmaintained for over a year, and needed serious work. I was
delighted when I received email from Janis, offering his help. Over the
next year, entirely of his own initiative, Janis ported Mixmaster's server
functionality to Windows, brought Mixmaster's OpenPGP support from an
unstable "alpha" state to a solid, usable feature set, and established
himself as an invaluable member of the Mixmaster development team. The
upcoming Mixmaster 3.0 release features a number of crucial improvements
which would not have happened had it not been for Janis's involvement.
My last communication with Janis was on October 11th of last year. He had
planned a vacation in Nepal, and expected to return a month later. When he
did not return, we feared the worst. Sadly, it turns out that our fears
were true: On October 31, while descending from Lobuche summit, Janis fell
250m, and did not survive.
I am dedicating this year's CodeCon conference to Janis's memory. Janis
will be missed, but his contributions will still be appreciated and
utilized. It is my hope that Janis's work will serve as an example for
other like-minded programmers, who chose to give their time and code in
the name of free speech and privacy.
Len Sassaman
13 February 2003
San Francisco, CA
--
Janis's home page may be viewed here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010927055328/disastry.dhs.org/
News of his accident can be found here:
http://www.vertikalex.lv/minisurvey/Discussion/ShowMessage.asp?ID=4703
vedaal
Hash: RIPEMD160
very, very sad news :(((((
there is very little to add,
but i would like to express gratitude for all the personal e-mail help he
has given me with GnuPG and PGP 2.6.3
everyone knows that he made first IDEA plug-in for gnupg
i had requested of him to add the throw_keyid switch to his multi series,
as it would be ideally suited to remailers,
and not only did he do so, but greatly improved upon it by adding the
fake_key id,and random key_id
so that even the anonymity could be disguised.
then, when it became apparent that this worked so well, that it fooled
gnupg too,
he made a patch for the 'try-all-secrets' option to be able to decrypt fake
and random keyid messages
as there was some misgiving about the md5 issue, he added the ripemd 160,
and sha hashes, as well as the newer ones
and his pgp2.6.3i multi remains the only pgp implementation that fits on a
bootable floppy, and leaves no traces in the registry
may his spirit and memory live on in his works, and in all the good that
people were able to accomplish by using any of his programs and innovations
with Profound Respect,
vedaal
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Comment: { Acts of Kindness better the World, and protect the Soul }
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icicle
xenophon
Hash: SHA1
On Thu, 13 Feb 2003 20:36:42 GMT, Len Sassaman <ra...@abditum.com> wrote:
>Janis Jagars, known to many people on the Internet by his handle Disastry,
>
He will be sadly missed, he was a very great asset to the community. I
didn't know him personally, but I appreciated his contributions to the
privacy and free speech arena. We could sure use more people like him.
Rest in peace Disastry.
Respectfully,
xenophon
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xenophon
Hash: SHA1
On Fri, 14 Feb 2003 10:24:16 +0100 (CET), Anonymous <cri...@ecn.org>
wrote:
>As someone else mentioned this isn't PGP signed and I wouldn't put
>anything past our troll, even something as low as this.
>
>I really really really hope this isn't true :(
I wish it wasn't true either.
Just the link from the original message,
http://www.vertikalex.lv/minisurvey/Discussion/ShowMessage.asp?ID=4703
makes me believe it. Can anyone translate that??
Regards,
xenophon
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Sam Simpson
friendly troll, I'd just like to add my agreement to the other posts
here....Janis made significant contribution to protect our privacy and was a
great asset to the community.
--
Cheers,
Sam Simpson
http://www.samsimpson.com/
"Len Sassaman" <ra...@abditum.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.30.QNWS.030...@thetis.deor.org...
vedaal
Hash: RIPEMD160
"xenophon" <xenopho...@xenophon.homeip.net> wrote in message
news:5sdp4vkfn02r5virb...@4ax.com...
...
> I wish it wasn't true either.
> Just the link from the original message,
> http://www.vertikalex.lv/minisurvey/Discussion/ShowMessage.asp?ID=4703
> makes me believe it. Can anyone translate that??
...
here is an unofficial non-verbatim translation froma reliable Latvian
interpreter that i contacted:
begin quote:
"The main facts in the text are:
- - Mr Janis Jagars, member of Latvian Mountain Climbing and Travelling
Association, died after falling from a height of 250 meters.
- - Ms Ilona Purmale is suffering from meningitis; she is in a very ill
condition
at the Katmandu Norvic hospital.
- - The message author believes that the above are not just rumours but
proven facts."
end quote
vedaal
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