RIP: Joerg Schilling

[Christian Weisgerber]

Jörg Schilling, aka "schily", has died from cancer.

For those who can read German:
https://twitter.com/FUZxxl/status/1447319844295254020
https://www.heise.de/news/Nachruf-Open-Source-Welt-trauert-um-Joerg-Schilling-6214446.html

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de

[Aragorn]

On 11.10.2021 at 17:42, Christian Weisgerber scribbled:

> Jörg Schilling, aka "schily", has died from cancer.
>
> For those who can read German:
> https://twitter.com/FUZxxl/status/1447319844295254020
> https://www.heise.de/news/Nachruf-Open-Source-Welt-trauert-um-Joerg-Schilling-6214446.html

Rest in peace, Jörg, and thank you for your many contributions to the
free & open source software community. You have truly made a difference
for the better in this world.

--
With respect,
= Aragorn =

[John McCue]

Christian Weisgerber <na...@mips.inka.de> wrote:
> J?rg Schilling, aka "schily", has died from cancer.
<snip>

Sad to hear and he was too young. Rest in peace.

--
csh(1) - "An elegant shell, for a more... civilized age."
- Paraphrasing Star Wars

[andrew]

On 2021-10-11, Christian Weisgerber <na...@mips.inka.de> wrote:

> Jörg Schilling, aka "schily", has died from cancer.

One of the great individuals of our Linux world, my thoughts to his
family and friends...

Andrew

[Spiros Bousbouras]

Fully agree. He has made contributions on usenet too including this group.
Rest in peace.

[Aragorn]

On 14.10.2021 at 15:38, Spiros Bousbouras scribbled:

He was in many GNU/Linux and UNIX newsgroups, even going back as far as
the year 2000, which is when I first "met" him, Usenet-wise. He was
always helpful and informative, and many people are still using his
cdrtools software — myself included.

[Spiros Bousbouras]

On Thu, 14 Oct 2021 19:52:35 +0200

Aragorn <thor...@telenet.be> wrote:
> On 14.10.2021 at 15:38, Spiros Bousbouras scribbled:
>
> > On Mon, 11 Oct 2021 22:58:36 +0200
> > Aragorn <thor...@telenet.be> wrote:
> > > On 11.10.2021 at 17:42, Christian Weisgerber scribbled:
> > >
> > > > Jörg Schilling, aka "schily", has died from cancer.
> > > >
> > > > For those who can read German:
> > > > https://twitter.com/FUZxxl/status/1447319844295254020
> > > > https://www.heise.de/news/Nachruf-Open-Source-Welt-trauert-um-Joerg-Schilling-6214446.html
> > > >
> > >
> > > Rest in peace, Jörg, and thank you for your many contributions to
> > > the free & open source software community. You have truly made a
> > > difference for the better in this world.
> >
> > Fully agree. He has made contributions on usenet too including this
> > group. Rest in peace.
>
> He was in many GNU/Linux and UNIX newsgroups, even going back as far as
> the year 2000, which is when I first "met" him, Usenet-wise. He was
> always helpful and informative, and many people are still using his
> cdrtools software — myself included.

I use cdrtools myself very often. It only occurred to me after I made
my previous reply. This is the first time as far as I can remember that
someone whose code I use has died so it was a shock for me. I guess the
open source movement is relatively young.

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 15.10.2021 02:53, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
>
> I guess the open source movement is relatively young.

I had my first contact with Open Source tools during the late 1980's.
Marking the FSF (Free Software Foundation) founding institutionally
as a sensible starting point (1985) I wouldn't call that "young",
in the fast evolving IT context even less. I'm glad the movement had
not only stayed alive for so long but even flourished and is now every
day an inherent part of (not necessarily knowingly) everyone's live.

Janis

[Spiros Bousbouras]

On Fri, 15 Oct 2021 11:49:42 +0200
Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 15.10.2021 02:53, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> >
> > I guess the open source movement is relatively young.
>
> I had my first contact with Open Source tools during the late 1980's.
> Marking the FSF (Free Software Foundation) founding institutionally
> as a sensible starting point (1985) I wouldn't call that "young",
> in the fast evolving IT context even less.

It is young relative to the average human lifespan. As for IT evolving fast ,
new fashions (or "technologies") certainly appear at a quick pace but a lot
of the old also stick around. Unix , Fortran and COBOL are older than open
source (by decades for the last 2) and are still going strong.

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 15.10.2021 15:59, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Oct 2021 11:49:42 +0200
> Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On 15.10.2021 02:53, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
>>>
>>> I guess the open source movement is relatively young.
>>
>> I had my first contact with Open Source tools during the late 1980's.
>> Marking the FSF (Free Software Foundation) founding institutionally
>> as a sensible starting point (1985) I wouldn't call that "young",
>> in the fast evolving IT context even less.
>
> It is young relative to the average human lifespan.

Well, it's still 35+ years, about two generations! (Even to human
lifespan that's a pretty long period. YMMV, of course.)

> As for IT evolving fast ,
> new fashions (or "technologies") certainly appear at a quick pace but a lot
> of the old also stick around. Unix , Fortran and COBOL are older than open
> source (by decades for the last 2) and are still going strong.

Lambda-Calculus or the first automatisms are even older. Not sure what
the reference to these two languages helps for the argument. They have
at best a relevance in legacy systems (that no one dares to touch) and
long grown libraries (that are primarily just called from other modern
languages). Only few people keep them alive, competent people who know
these languages are rare, switched platform and languages, or died. It
is therefore difficult to get things competently done with these old
languages, as far as I can tell from my experiences. YMMV. But I don't
intend to extend the argument with you on that, if only since "young"
is anyway an undetermined characterization and lies in the eye of the
beholder.

>
>> I'm glad the movement had
>> not only stayed alive for so long but even flourished and is now every
>> day an inherent part of (not necessarily knowingly) everyone's live.

The only thing I wanted to express here was that I was really astonished
how long that movement already existed. While I already knew it was long
existing, pondering about it in the context of the original thread topic
made it obvious (to me) how many years passed since its origin and
commanded even more deep respect for the open source movement.

Janis

[William Unruh]

On 2021-10-16, Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 15.10.2021 15:59, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
>> On Fri, 15 Oct 2021 11:49:42 +0200
>> Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 15.10.2021 02:53, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I guess the open source movement is relatively young.
>>>
>>> I had my first contact with Open Source tools during the late 1980's.
>>> Marking the FSF (Free Software Foundation) founding institutionally
>>> as a sensible starting point (1985) I wouldn't call that "young",
>>> in the fast evolving IT context even less.
>>
>> It is young relative to the average human lifespan.
>
> Well, it's still 35+ years, about two generations! (Even to human
> lifespan that's a pretty long period. YMMV, of course.)
>
>> As for IT evolving fast ,
>> new fashions (or "technologies") certainly appear at a quick pace but a lot
>> of the old also stick around. Unix , Fortran and COBOL are older than open
>> source (by decades for the last 2) and are still going strong.
>
> Lambda-Calculus or the first automatisms are even older. Not sure what
> the reference to these two languages helps for the argument. They have
> at best a relevance in legacy systems (that no one dares to touch) and
> long grown libraries (that are primarily just called from other modern

Fortran is stillthe language of choice for people doing numerical work
It is not legacy.

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 17.10.2021 17:00, William Unruh wrote:
> On 2021-10-16, Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On 15.10.2021 15:59, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:

>>> [ Fortran and COBOL ]
>>
>> [...] Not sure what

>> the reference to these two languages helps for the argument. They have
>> at best a relevance in legacy systems (that no one dares to touch) and
>> long grown libraries (that are primarily just called from other modern
>
> Fortran is stillthe language of choice for people doing numerical work

Really? Still? Where? Any why?

> It is not legacy.

We spoke about two languages and I suggested two categories.

COBOL has "relevance in legacy systems". Having it still running
on old mainframes in the financial sector, and being continuously
standardized, doesn't make these _systems_ non-legacy. It's only
practically impossible to replace them, maintenance is expensive,
people with COBOL competence rare. Companies in that sector tried
to replace these systems for long but the long time grown, often
not sufficiently documented software is critical yet to be touched.

Fortran has "relevance in long grown libraries", the second category
I mentioned. There are long time established libraries specifically
for numerical computation since decades and still in active use. Yes.

Or did you mean that for some people Fortran is also the language of
choice to do the programming around these libraries? Well, if so - as
someone with CS background and who has programmed in Fortran and knows
that language -, I can just shake my head. Why would one want to code
in Fortran, nowadays? Seriously asked.

But, frankly, I don't know how big the user community these days is.
Do you know it?

Though, in that formulated generality it's anyway not true. My children,
for example, are working in geophysics, do heavy numerical simulation
work and also occasionally (where necessary) use Fortran libraries, but
their preference to do the programming around the libraries are clearly
other languages, ranging from C++ to Python. (Note: that's of course not
their personal preference - they are no CS professionals - but that just
reflects the situation at the two large universities hereabouts.) That's
why I am astonished about your statement.

Janis

[John McCue]

> On 17.10.2021 17:00, William Unruh wrote:
>> On 2021-10-16, Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

>> Fortran is stillthe language of choice for people doing numerical work
>
> Really? Still? Where? Any why?

<snip>

In Linux Questions someone just got a job working with
Fortran on HP/UX, Quote:

"As it is I am back to Fortran and Unix. Happy days"

So at least one place is looking for Fortran.

Link to thread in https://www.linuxquestions.org
https://tinyurl.com/4sbms2e4

With all I have been reading about people leaving due to covid,
I would guess many of these jobs will become available.

John

[Spiros Bousbouras]

On Sun, 17 Oct 2021 19:54:48 +0200
Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Fortran has "relevance in long grown libraries", the second category
> I mentioned. There are long time established libraries specifically
> for numerical computation since decades and still in active use. Yes.
>
> Or did you mean that for some people Fortran is also the language of
> choice to do the programming around these libraries? Well, if so - as
> someone with CS background and who has programmed in Fortran and knows
> that language -, I can just shake my head. Why would one want to code
> in Fortran, nowadays? Seriously asked.

Because one likes the built-in facilities for parallel programming ; or
because one likes the facilities for modules and OOP better than the
analogous for C++ .

[Charlie Roberts]

On Mon, 11 Oct 2021 17:42:07 -0000 (UTC), Christian Weisgerber
<na...@mips.inka.de> wrote:

>Jörg Schilling, aka "schily", has died from cancer.
>
>For those who can read German:
>https://twitter.com/FUZxxl/status/1447319844295254020
>https://www.heise.de/news/Nachruf-Open-Source-Welt-trauert-um-Joerg-Schilling-6214446.html

Thank you for letting us know. It is a shock as he was young. I
started to use his CD writing tool, cdrecord, in the late 90s and had
a few email exchanges trying to clear things up. He was curt, but
always helpful and resolved all my issues.

It looks like this happened some time ago.

https://marketresearchtelecast.com/obituary-the-open-source-world-mourns-jorg-schilling/176251/

The Wikipedia page for cdrtools aslo mentions the date as
10 Oct 2021.

Very tragic. RIP.

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