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RIP: Leonard Zubkoff 352

Posted by chrisd from the we'll-miss-you-friend dept.
UnidentifiedCoward writes "LWN.net has a link to a blurb at KTVA, "Alaska State Troopers have recovered the bodies and released the names of two men killed late last week in a helicopter crash in Southeast. They are 38-year-old David Zampino of Fairbanks and 45-year-old Leonard Zubkoff of Crystal Bay, Nevada." Mr. Zubkoff was a linux kernel developer and the maintainer of BusLogic and DAC960 projects." Leonard was a hell of a nice guy and will be missed.
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RIP: Leonard Zubkoff More

RIP: Leonard Zubkoff

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  • Once again... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by A Clockwork Orange ( 251566 ) <jacob@tri[ ]der.org ['-co' in gap]> on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @09:20PM (#4197981) Homepage
    Another of the world's many reminders of how fragile life is.
    • And why was is this post still at 0!?!? That was the exact thought I had when I saw this story. It's a terrible thing when someone dies, but we can still take away lessons from things like this. Mod parent up!

  • Cryonics enthusiast (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @09:27PM (#4198015)
    From dandelion digital's homepage:

    "Leonard is also active in the Cryonics movement, and hosts the domain for Consonance."

    Not to be morbid or too sick, but does anyone see the irony of a cryonics enthusiast dying in an accident in ALASKA?

  • The Amiga. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Troy H Parker ( 600654 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @09:29PM (#4198023)
    As is often said when an Amiga user passes away, "The Amiga, it will outlive all of us."
    • Er... Isn't the Amiga already dead?

      No disrespect to the platform, which even today has yet to be surpassed by PCs in some ways, but you can't exactly go to Best Buy and pick up the latest 68070-powered Amiga PC with optional firewire video toaster add-on.
      • No, but you can pick up one with a G3 600MHz, the developer boards have already been released, and several Linux distrobutions have been ported to the new PPC Amiga. The new PPC native OS, AmigaOS4, is scheduled to be released before Christmas. Firewire is planned.

    • Re:The Amiga. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Troy writes:
      As is often said when an Amiga user passes away, "The Amiga, it will outlive all of us."
      Yeah, as long as the thrift shop doesn't burn down.

    • Re:The Amiga. (Score:3, Informative)

      by dan the person ( 93490 )
      Too right brother, his work is still doing it's stuff on my box at home

      cat /proc/scsi/BusLogic/0
      ***** BusLogic SCSI Driver Version 2.1.15 of 17 August 1998 *****
      Copyright 1995-1998 by Leonard N. Zubkoff <lnz@dandelion.com>
      Configuring BusLogic Model BT-930 PCI Ultra SCSI Host Adapter
      Firmware Version: 5.02, I/O Address: 0xDC00, IRQ Channel: 10/Level
      PCI Bus: 0, Device: 10, Address: 0xDFFFF000, Host Adapter SCSI ID: 7
      Parity Checking: Enabled, Extended Translation: Enabled
      Synchronous Negotiation: FUUFFFF#, Wide Negotiation: Disabled
      Disconnect/Reconnect: Enabled, Tagged Queuing: Enabled
      Driver Queue Depth: 255, Scatter/Gather Limit: 128 segments
      Tagged Queue Depth: Automatic, Untagged Queue Depth: 3
      Error Recovery Strategy: Default, SCSI Bus Reset: Enabled
      SCSI Bus Termination: Enabled, SCAM: Disabled
      *** BusLogic BT-930 Initialized Successfully ***

      Target 2: Queue Depth 3, Synchronous at 20.0 MB/sec, offset 8
      Target 3: Queue Depth 3, Synchronous at 6.67 MB/sec, offset 15

      Current Driver Queue Depth: 255
      Currently Allocated CCBs: 28
      [snip]
  • It seems as if anyone who had a role in developing modern day systems are dieing. Conspiracy, I sure damn hope not.

  • Linux Driver programmer will be missed my many (Score:5, Informative)

    by swimfastom ( 216375 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @09:29PM (#4198027) Homepage
    Leonard will be missed by many. He was Dandelion Digital's [dandelion.com] sole proprietor. He also has a page [dandelion.com] about his Linux acheivements, especially his SCSI drivers which are commonly used today.
    • Leonard's death was also mentioned at the Worldcon science fiction convention in San Jose. I don't think I know him, but many of the other filk singers did - as his web page says, he's been hosting the web site for the Consonance annual music conventions, and the "dandelion" in his domain name and masthead has become somewhat of an icon for the filk music genre. Lotsa folks knew and miss him.
      • I was wondering whether the sad news made it in time for the WorldCon, considering the fact that the helicopter crash took place on the last day of ConJose.

        If you got the chance to know filkers you'll know that the filksings in his memory must have been a very moving experience. I always found it amazing how filk can combine the utmost in sarcasm, cynicism and irony with the most romantic, sentimental and heroic.
    • I found a problem with the BusLogic driver he maintained. He was very helpful and suggested a fix. I said thanks, I'll try it and get back to you sometime. Now I never will.

  • Two people died (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous DWord ( 466154 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @09:45PM (#4198088) Homepage
    Leonard was a hell of a nice guy and will be missed.

    And David?

    • Re:Two people died (Score:3, Insightful)

      by matt-fu ( 96262 )
      And David?

      Well, if you knew him, you should say something. If you didn't, it's kind of hard to say anything but "I'm sure David was a great guy too!" or "Any friend of a kernel developer is a friend of mine!"

    • Re:Two people died (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Maybe Chris knew Leonard personally and not David. He wouldnt exactly be quallified to comment on someone-he-did'nt-know's personallity any more than you assholes are to be commenting on his.

    • Re:Two people died (Score:4, Insightful)

      by einhverfr ( 238914 ) <chris...travers@@@gmail...com> on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:24AM (#4198574) Homepage Journal
      Story:

      Leonard was a hell of a nice guy and will be missed.

      Reply:
      And David?

      Of course, but not on slashdot ;)

      Lets face it, Leonard was a part of our community, David to my knowledge was not. His communities will miss him too, but not on slashdot.

  • Leonard was also interested in Cryonics. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    According to Dandelions page, Leonard was also interested in the Cryonics movement. While I don't personally think this works / is going to work, I feel sorry that he's not going to get a chance to test it out himself. Unless someone has information to the contrary?

    Goodbye Leonard, you will be missed.

    Bryn.
    • "I feel sorry that he's not going to get a chance to test it out himself."

      Leonard was on the Alcor Advisory Board:

      http://alcor.org/AboutAlcor/alcorStaff.htm

      Since you are not permitted to be a board member unless you are signed up, it's likely he will be suspended, regardless of the situation, unless there is a requirement for an autopsy, and Alcor is unable to get a court order to have the body released.

      In general, Alcor is very aggressive in ensuring that its patients get suspended as quickly as possible, and with as little concommitant damage as possible. Everyone doing the work is themselves signed up, and will treat the patient as they themselves expect to be treated.

      Even in the case of serious damage, there will be a "best effort" attempt, unless the patient specifies otherwise; from the FAQ ( http://alcor.org/FAQs/ ):

      --
      Q: What if it is impossible to place me into suspension?
      A: The Alcor Cryonic Suspension Agreement has provisions for this possibility. Options are available, including naming secondary beneficiaries to whom funds set aside for suspension can be paid. Many members want their suspension funds going towards efforts focusing on recovering any biological remains whatsoever, regardless of the degree of damage or time elapsed.
      --

      The person to contact for status should be the Alcor press contact; whether or not they will make information available in this depends wholly on the privacy agreements in place with the patient.

      -- Terry

  • Leonard Zubkoff is also notable... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xenoweeno ( 246136 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @09:55PM (#4198122)
    ...for having been the last name in the alphabetical list of kernel contributors for quite a long time. So notable was this that it called for a special entry in CREDITS--that is, until contributors with last names past "zu" came along, requiring CREDITS to be patched [surriel.com].

  • FAA Preliminary Accident Report (Score:5, Informative)

    by xlation ( 228159 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @09:56PM (#4198126)
    There's not much in the FAA report (see below) but it looks like weather wasn't an issue.

    -----
    IDENTIFICATION
    Regis#: 7189T Make/Model: R44 Description: 2000 ROBINSON R-44
    Date: 08/29/2002 Time:

    Event Type: Accident Highest Injury: Fatal Mid Air: N Missing: N
    Damage: Substantial

    LOCATION
    City: KETCHIKAN State: AK Country: US

    DESCRIPTION
    2000 ROBINSON 44 HELICOPTER CRASHED IN WINSTANLEY LAKE, LOCATED UPSIDE
    DOWN, 2 POB SUFFERED FATAL INJURIES, OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES ARE UNKNOWN,
    KETCHIKAN, AK

    INJURY DATA Total Fatal: 2
    # Crew: 1 Fat: 1 Ser: 0 Min: 0 Unk:
    # Pass: 1 Fat: 1 Ser: 0 Min: 0 Unk:
    # Grnd: Fat: 0 Ser: 0 Min: 0 Unk:

    WEATHER: KTN METAR 08/30/02 0053 UTC 34009KT 10SM SCT040 BKN070

    OTHER DATA
    Activity: Pleasure Phase: Unknown Operation: General Aviation

    Departed: KETCHIKAN, AK Dep Date: 08/28/2002 Dep. Time: 0349
    Destination: WINSTANLEY LAKE, AK Flt Plan: NONE Wx Briefing: U
    Last Radio Cont: DEPARTING KETCHIKAN
    Last Clearance: NONE

    FAA FSDO: JUNEAU, AK (AL05) Entry date: 08/30/2002

    • Re:FAA Preliminary Accident Report (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Cecil ( 37810 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @11:37PM (#4198463) Homepage
      Actually, the weather could well have been a factor.

      While the METAR doesn't explicitly state that there was any icing conditions, that is certainly not a confirmation that there were none. Especially if the pilot was flying through some of the scattered clouds that were 4,000 feet above ground level. That's a very quick way to pick up a lot of ice.

      And I doubt that Robinson 44 had anything more than meagre de-icing equipment at best.

      I will concede that there was likely some mechanical failure contributing to, if not causing the accident, but it doesn't mean you can rule out the weather entirely.
    • The actual weather report for AKT (which has the FAA station identifier of KTN) is as follows:
      PAKT 300053Z 34009KT 10SM SCT040 BKN070 17/11 A3008 RMK AO2 SLP187
      HARBOR WND 31012KT T01720106=
      For those who don't read METAR (which includes some of us meteorologist), here is the gist:

      Temp: 63F/17C
      Dewp: 51F/11C
      Winds: Northwest at 14mph/12kts
      Pressure: 1018.7mb
      Sky: mostly scattered or broken between 4000ft/1220m to 7000ft/2135m
      Visibility: 10miles/16km

      All in all, not a bad day, though it was a little windy. I do agree with an above post that icing COULD be a possibility, but with a surface temp as warm as it was, they would have to be flying pretty high.
      • I do agree with an above post that icing COULD be a possibility, but with a surface temp as warm as it was, they would have to be flying pretty high.

        Huh? A surface temp of 17 celcius is the perfect temperature for forming carbueretor ice. The air cools 15-20 degrees in the carbueretor as it rushes through the venturi tube. Of course, as soon as this starts to happen, the process accelerates, since the ice effectively narrows the venturi tube, making the air even colder in there.



        Ironically, when the surface temp is near or below freezing, carb icing ceases to be an issue, since the air in the venturi is so cold that ice crystallizes quickly before the moisture gets on the walls of the venturi. However, at this temperature you need to wtart worrying about surface icing (does surface icing affect helicopters? I only fly planes.)

        • Like I said, I am a meteorologist, not a pilot. I stand corrected and appreciate the information! Thanks.
        • I think your confusing celsus with farenhiet. 17 degs celsus is 17 degries beond freasing, which is 0 degs in celsus.
          • I think your confusing celsus with farenhiet. 17 degs celsus is 17 degries beond freasing, which is 0 degs in celsus.

            No, go re-read what he said: The air cools 15-20 degrees in the carbueretor as it rushes through the venturi tube.

            17 degrees celsius - 20 = -3C == Freezing temperature.

            I just got back from Japan, and someone asked me how the weather was and I said it was a pretty humid 32+ week. They got really confused and asked, "I thought it was over 90 there?" *sigh*
            • I just got back from Japan, and someone asked me how the weather was and I said it was a pretty humid 32+ week. *sigh*

              Sane people never do Japan in August. I did it once. That was enough for me. From now on it's March or November!

          • Um, no, being a Canadian who doesn't even understand temperatures in Fahrenheit at all, I understand Celcius perfectly well, thank you.

            I stand by my original statement. With a surface temperature at 17 degrees celcius, carbueretor icing is a problem, as the air inside the carbueretor is 15-20 degrees celcius cooler than the air outside.

            Please go back and read my post in its entirety and you will understand.
      • The weather speculation is pretty specious here.

        The nearest weather report we have is Ketchikan, which is 30 miles from the crash site. My understanding is that the crash site is next to a lake, which means that you could have very localized conditions of fog or clouds.

        As far as ice, carb ice is very possible. Surface icing is possible if the temperature is low, and if you're flying in visible moisture. You won't get surface icing in the 60's.

        The truth is, we really don't have any idea what caused the accident. The NTSB does wonderful work. The field investigators and the lab technicians are magicians. There's no burning immediate need to find the cause, so let's wait for their report next year.

  • Obit topic (Score:4, Insightful)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @10:01PM (#4198146) Homepage Journal
    Slashdot seems to run a lot of obituaries. Perhaps there should be a topic for it.

    • Re:Obit topic (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      autopr0n writes:
      Slashdot seems to run a lot of obituaries. Perhaps there should be a topic for it.
      There already is. It's called the BSD section.

    • Slashdot seems to run a lot of obituaries. Perhaps there should be a topic for it.

      With what icon?

      Some of the most obvious choices seem like the worst. I don't want some cheezy grim reaper cartoon. A tombstone is just morbid. There must be some better way to represent a lifetime of accomplishment.

      Something earthy (from nature, not cyberspace) and subtle. Perhaps footsteps in the sand.

  • One to Emulate (Score:3, Insightful)

    by QuantumWeasel ( 606327 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @10:04PM (#4198163)
    I will never forget how it felt to install Mr. Zubkoff's BusLogic drivers in a 2.0.8 kernel for the first time. Back then, the drivers hadn't yet made their way into Linus' tree. As a veteran of rolling my own kernel, having built X and gotten it up when that was still an accomplishment, and having bled on libc #defines, I settled in for major pain. But Mr. Zubkoff's driver dropped right in. Like butter. The nost seamless thing I'd ever seen. He will be missed, not only for great drivers but also for providing a model of how the Linux community could approach initially reluctant vendors for register-level APIs. Here's to you, sir!

  • His Gods have him well (Score:2, Insightful)

    by CTib ( 4626 )
    Oh my, it is so freakingly painful to look at the web page of a dead person that, even while you didn't know it, took part at your life...

  • Bummer. And thanks. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MissMyNewton ( 521420 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @10:11PM (#4198186)
    As much as I despise Linux "advocates" these days, I remain in awe and appreciation of the coders who just make stuff work .

    Many thanks to *all* of them.

    Bet they don't hear that enough...

    • As much as I despise Linux "advocates" these days

      Why is an advocate a bad thing? I advocate a great many technologies when I feel they are the right tool for the job. Have I done something to offend?

  • The fuck is the matter with you people? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So a guy gets killed in an accident, and so far about 75% of the posts to this story are racist, homophobic, anti-Linux trolls and comments to the effect of "He deserved it" or "I'll bet it was Microsoft." For a group of people that is supposed to be so intelligent (key word there is "supposed"), there are a lot of idiots reading Slashdot. If you don't have anything constructive to say, then either don't say it at all, or save it for the next evolution flamebait story.

    Yeah, I know .. you don't care. But I'll tell you this: One day, somebody you do care about will die, and I hope that your thoughts are preoccupied with the horrific things that you've posted to this story, and how terrible you behaved. Most /. readers are high school and college kids that wouldn't know the first thing about true loss. That will change with time.
    • Here here. The more I read the replies for stories, the more I see that they are a bunch of little school kids.

      If people aren't involved directly, why to they need to make things worse?

      Just my $.02
      • Suggestion: You could browse at threshold 1, and only view a story when there's at least 30 comments.

        That at least cuts out the very worst of /. comments (at the expense of a few interesting ones, but c'est la vie.) I hardly ever see any of that offensive tripe with this strategy, and when I do, and if they're really bad, they usually are logged in so they go on my Foes list and I never see them again.

    • "So a guy gets killed in an accident, and so far about 75% of the posts to this story are racist, homophobic, anti-Linux trolls and comments to the effect of "He deserved it" or "I'll bet it was Microsoft."

      I wouldn't get too hyped up over it. It's mostly a bunch of AC's. If somebody were to say that shit with their registerred nick, then I'd really start worrying about how intelligent people here think they really are.

  • About David Zampino (Score:5, Informative)

    by rkanodia ( 211354 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @10:21PM (#4198218)
    Most people here probably know more about Leonard Zubkoff, so why don't I talk a little about David Zampino. Mr. Zampino ("Please, call me Dave") was my boss at the company I worked for during the summer between high school and college. At that time, he was working for RCN, a fairly large ISP. He taught me a great portion of what I know about TCP/IP and routing equipment. He was a great boss; on days with lots of customers calling, he would tell us techs (not just 'let' us; he would say, "Be sure to expense that,"!) to expense pizza delivery if we decided to work through lunch. His focus was always, always on having good customer service. He really wanted the company to have a reputation as being dependable and competent, even if it cost time and money. He also did not have much patience for office politics. One time, a customer called and complained that his Unreal server had suddenly become sluggish, and all the players' ping times had gone up 60 miliseconds. I investigated, found a problem in our routing, and sent an email to the appropriate internal mailing list. When the person in charge of the buggy area fired back a reply chastising my inexperience and ridiculous notions, Dave was on it like a hawk. In less than 15 minutes he, too, had investigated the problem, and wrote to the list both to back me up and to castigate the other manager (albeit in a very diplomatic way) for reflexively 'defending his turf' without even looking into the problem!

    I don't know a whole lot about him before that time. Mr. Zampino was the founder of Brainstorm (1990-1991 ish), which started as a hardware company making accelerator cards for Macs. They ended up as a local, business-only ISP (long story) which was eventually bought by RCN, which is how he ended up there. While he may not have been a kernel hacker, he was certainly no slouch in Unix operation and programming, nor in hardware design. Although I have not worked for RCN since the summer of 2000, and I believe he left the company earlier this year, I am sure he is fondly remembered by all his co-workers.

    Rest in peace, Dave. I am proud to have had the privilege of knowing you.
  • You know after reading some of the contents of the posts here it kinda makes me wonder.

    One reader noted that joked a time of death are cathartic, and that holds true and the particular post was well met.

    99% of the posts were legit, guy telling the story how the data he is looking at currently is brought by a driver one of the newly departed wrote... Another post told how he worked under one and has fond memories of him being a nice guy.

    But there are still posts slamming them as Windows usrers, arguing about Amigas, etc.

    Life does go on Slashdot. But you know death does too. Lets remember that, AC's, or just plain assholed. Time and a place for everything.

    Puto
  • From Danelion Digital:
    "Leonard is also active in the Cryonics movement, and hosts the domain for Consonance."
    I wonder if he's asked his family to freeze his body.
    • I wonder if he's asked his family to freeze his body.

      I wonder about this as well, but I expect the answer to be private, unless the family wishes otherwise.

      Also, speculation on that note is probably moot, considering the probable condition of his body after the crash.

      He did, according to one of the tributes left at the puffin.com tribute page, tell family and friends not to feel sad if he died in a helicopter crash. And as was said, so far, they can't honor that request, either.

      He sounded like a cool guy, overall, and it's a shame that most of us never hear about "the people behind the scenes" until it's too late to feel the connection to them. At least more of them get recognized than their counterparts in closed-source commercial projects.
  • I've used several cards using drivers by lnz@dendelion.com; I think the first 'totally built from scratch to be a Linux server' machine I ever put together used a 53c875 Symbios chip, and he helped me get it running at top speed to show off Linux's speed for a database. This would have been better than 5 years ago, at least. We'd been using Linux a lot longer than that on 'stock' machines, but needed some more 'umph' than we could get, and he was a great resource for support and friendly help. He'll be missed.

  • A real pleasure to work (remotely) with LNZ (Score:4, Informative)

    by el borak ( 263323 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:33AM (#4198591)
    Many years ago, I wrote the original Buslogic driver for Linux. After maintaining it for a while, Leonard appeared with significant improvements. I knew the name sounded vaguely familiar but it took me a while to place.

    As an undergrad at CMU, the CS terminal room was rather evenly split between DEC VT52 and Concept C100 terminals. And then there were the "special" terminals: the Concept-LNZ. These amazing little creatures were a result of Leonard's graduate work. They contained custom firmware that the locally hacked version of Unix Emacs contained special support for. It cached frequently displayed tokens in local (off screen) video memory and exchanged an encoded/compressed token stream with the editor. Working over a 2400 bps serial line was an absolute dream on these. It sped up the editing sessions to an amazing degree.

    When I asked Leonard in an e-mail if he was "the" LNZ of Concept-LNZ fame, he was rather flabergasted that someone would remember this over 10 years later. He gradually took over support for the Buslogic driver as he was both a better driver writer and had local access to the Buslogic lab to do testing.

    When I read this headline, my gut tied in a very tight knot that will not soon be untangled.

    We'll miss you, Leonard.

    • Concept LNZ! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jamie Zawinski ( 775 )
      Yeah, I remember those! I worked in that terminal room when I was in high school, and the C-LNZs were definitely the ones to get; they were so much faster. Then years later, I worked with Leonard at Lucid, and was shocked to discover that he was that very same LNZ. I'm sure I gushed at him about what an amazing hack those terminals were.

      Bye, Leonard. You'll be missed.

  • Power of Open Source (not flamebait or troll) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by powerlinekid ( 442532 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:58AM (#4198631)
    First of all my condolances to the loved ones of David and Leonard. I never knew either, but from the glowing comments I've read... I wish I had. Unfortunately shit happens. Its part of life. However even though Leonard has passed on, his legacy will be the code he has contributed to linux. From what I've understand that seems to be some extensive work on the scsi system which is no small task in its self. All of this makes me wonder, because of the freedom of his code... his work will live on through others, would this be the case in "non-OS" software? Say Company M has a programmer P who is chiefly responsible for widget W. Now say programmer P passes on and besides maybe a few people who understand the code, who works on W? But if P's work was done to be scrutinized by the masses, that work would continue on. I believe this is one important reason why information should be free. If something happens to the creator, their work can continue on if it has value to someone. It makes me wonder how many people had brilliant ideas, but closely guarded them to the point that they died with them.
    • Remember that P might stop working on W for other reasons then death. He might leave the company, he might retire. Companies need to plan for that possibility. In open source developing, someone else might pick up the project, because he needs the functionality. On the other hand, the project may be forgotten.

      Company M has to make sure that the continuity of W is guaranteed, either by current co-workers, or by contracting someone new to continu it. If they don't they will be out of business soon. This is one of the reasons that closed source software is more expensive then software hacked on by one single person. Businesses may keep "old" development tools, just because it may be easier to replace a no longer available employee by an experienced developer.

      I do not disagree with your assertion that information freedom is important, but your assumption that it is necessary for software to be open source to guarantee continuity in case of a dying developer is wrong, IMHO. What happens if the business itself goes belly-up is an entirely different matter ofcourse.
      • I was going to get into when companies go under, which entails the whole issue with abandon-ware. However when P retires, if they last that long, most likely there will be non-disclosure agreements. I know from working at IBM that everything i do is theirs. I would imagine any separation of P from M would require some hefty paperwork, if W was that important. However you are right, I'm sure in most cases W will be picked up by someone else. My concern was more about what happens when someone doesn't. That M decides that it'll cost too much to train someone else to hack around on W. Or you have an anti-stallman. Someone that creates their own tools and system, and instead of giving it to everyone generously, they keep it to themselves. Thats their right and I respect it, but it still kinda sucks.

  • lnz was cool (Score:5, Informative)

    by dan_bethe ( 134253 ) <slashdot@@@smuckola...org> on Thursday September 05, 2002 @01:09AM (#4198651)
    Here are some big runon blurbs I tend to write in order to fondly remember and credit someone.

    I was employee number twentysomething (IT admin) at VA Research, and I was interviewed by Larry, Rob, and Leonard. lnz always had time to randomly consult on the spot with employees in terms of engineering or general technology. Whenever he'd breeze through the office (never coming in before afternoon), ya knew he was kickin some ass. He was often seen smiling. He was one of the first people I was personally aware of to really use Linux itself to make a big dent in major industry, through his work with Buslogic and Mylex SCSI controllers. He told me when Adaptec finally stopped disavowing the existance of Linux, they came to VA and said "We're sorry. Can we play with Linux now?" and lnz said, "No. Too late." He'd already schooled them on Linux from the grassroots on up, forcing them to acknowledge an emerging market. I'm sure he was a strong mentor for that driver engineering and reverse engineering community. Man, that takes devotion and patience.

    Ya couldn't mess with his workflow. He had like a mini data center and R&D lab at his house, which he relied solely on at all times, telneting home and xhosting his XEmacs display back to the office when we had public IP addresses for all workstations. :} I'd just negotiate with him so that he didn't have to end up scrounging together an engineering team to duplicate all of IT's infrastructure. *wink to mobyone and claw*

    Then with the pre-IPO, he had to move his R&D out of his house into the office. This was when we were in the original garage-like Mountain View office next door to SGI North American sales on Shoreline, and our building's resources was about 3 times overcommitted by our growth rate. We had phone lines and ethernet cords draping out of the ceiling down to shared desks in order to accommodate having new employees per week, and I had to figure out how to route power all around the building using very warm and very illegal 14 gauge extension cords from each available power circuit to wherever in the building lnz's engineers needed them. Routed em like some people route ethernet cables. Such as to lnz's new 1 terabyte file server sitting next to my desk, powered by the women's restroom. That server was lnz's baby; you may have seen it at the March 1999 Linuxworld Expo. He blew that circuit that afternoon. Permanently. The women's restroom never worked again. Thanks to his rapidly growing engineering dept and to our new sales dept, the power generator in the back was hot enough to singe your body hair when you opened the door to it. The fsck alone on that event pushed the ship date back a day or more. Yeah he was shipping 1TB RAID servers with ext2. :}

    lnz inadvertantly taught me a lot about fire and safety codes of Mountain View and Sunnyvale, and he taught me the proper use of the word "cryonics" instead of Hollywood's improper use of "cryogenics". He's one super nice guy. Hope to see ya around, lnz.

    • Re:lnz was cool (Score:5, Informative)

      by shlong ( 121504 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @02:25AM (#4198819) Homepage
      He told me when Adaptec finally stopped disavowing the existance of Linux, they came to VA and said "We're sorry. Can we play with Linux now?" and lnz said, "No. Too late." He'd already schooled them on Linux from the grassroots on up, forcing them to acknowledge an emerging market.

      I really am sorry to hear of Mr. Zubkoff's death, and I certainly do not wish to disrepect him, but this comment is totally and completely wrong. I was one of the Adaptec guys in that meeting. The conversation was something like this:

      We're working on officially supporting Linux. One thing that we noticed is that the Linux SCSI layer really, really, really sucks. We'd like to rewrite it, but we need your political support.

      I agree that the SCSI layer needs to be fixed, but I'd rather fix it myself than support you. Goodbye.

      There was no "schooling us on Linux from the grassroots up", only a rather rude snub at our offer to make Linux better. That was 15 months ago, and we haven't seen any significant progress towards fixing the SCSI layer, other than the patches for bugfixes that we come up with and submit ourselves.

      You attempt to troll Adaptec for something that you obviously were not a part of is not appreciated. Look at all of the SCSI vendors out there and tell me which gives better support for Linux? All of our drivers are GPL and we give bug fixes back to the community when we find them. What's your problem?

      • Re:lnz was cool (Score:5, Informative)

        by dan_bethe ( 134253 ) <slashdot@@@smuckola...org> on Thursday September 05, 2002 @02:59AM (#4198890)
        Good grief! Get a grip! All I said is that's what he told me in 1999. I know he was wacky, egotistical, and NIH-oriented, and that Linux's SCSI has issues! :) Comments aren't always perfect from everyone's point of view and the topic is in memory of a nice guy.

        To respond to your semi-relevant and personally misconstrued tangent, Adaptec had been utterly uninvolved with Linux up to that point in time, and the Linux drivers were very low end even though the community had done an awesome job of reverse engineering them without Adaptec's help. Immediately before joining VA, I was in 3rd level support at Netcom Hosting which consisted exclusively of Adaptec 2940UW's on Linux, and we had to disable every advanced feature just to keep them booted. I later worked with a guy who had previously been a project manager at Adaptec and who described to me the horrors involved in trying to get Adaptec's management to acknowledge the basic relevance of the existance of IEEE1394, and who concurred that they had been unconcerned with Linux at the point I mentioned.

        The open source community's unstoppable ingenuity is what forced a lot of companies in general to pay attention to Linux's virtues in order to eventually remain relevant. That's all I meant. It was a comment about lnz's personal tenacity in his memory as a community icon, not an orthagonally correct industrial analysis.

        The first half of your comment was relevant and appreciated though. I don't have the anonymous bitterness and cynicism required to contend in Slashdot discussions, so have a nice day and please move on. :)
      • "Look at all of the SCSI vendors out there and tell me which gives better support for Linux?"

        Um, BusLogic? Who supported Linux LONG before Adaptec did? In fact, the very drivers that LNZ maintained? Whose cards had mature Linux drivers LONG before you even acknowledged Linux?
        • Look, all you clowns keep on saying, "In 1999, Adaptec snubbed Linux. Therefore, they suck!" For you're information, it's now 2002, and Adaptec is not snubbing Linux. Here is a good place to look [adaptec.com]. Adaptec writes all of it's drivers in house (with the exception of the aacraid driver, it's been a joint effort with RedHat) and gives them official support. We participate in the mailing lists and work closely with the vendors. We feed bugfixes back to the community, even when they aren't for our code. We have a public presence and respond to everyone who emails us. About the only thing we don't do is tape a $100 bill to all of our products and ship them for free to you.

  • Leonard and Emacs / Richard Stallman and GPL (Score:4, Informative)

    by leighklotz ( 192300 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @01:52AM (#4198738) Homepage
    Leonard made changes to Emacs on ITS and TOPS-10 when he was at CMU, in order to take advantage of the screen buffer controls (insert line, rather than redraw-rest-of-screen, etc.) on the Heath/Zenith H19/Z19 VT52 clone.

    Although as everyone knows Leonard later became a strong contributor to free software, these updates to Emacs he placed under a restrictive license, and vigorously protected his code. RMS was quite upset by this, as were some other folks. Although Stallman's tiff with Symbolics over Lisp Machine source access is often cited as the reason he started the GNU project, I believe that his interactions with Leonard over ZEmacs were an even earlier influence.

    So, in some sense, we have Leonard to thank for the Gnu project that he later contributed to.

    Here [google.com] is the earliest Usenet mention that Google has (we weren't all big USENET users in those days -- it was mostly UUCP modem-based systems).
  • there's something to it...when I saw the name I knew it was someone important, but I couldn't connect the name to the accomplishment. Yeah, Leonard lives on, in my dmesg. What more can a man ask for? as I have watched so many machines boot over the years, names such as his have become so familiar.

    Fare the well Leonard, in the great archive in the sky, and be assured that backups will retain your code, forever.
  • I have nothing but praise for Leonard. He worked diligently on the project, and was always helpful. He had some of the most kickass hardware around (a 4 processor personal box, for example).

    Although I have not worked on XFree86 for a while, I'm sure he will be missed.

    Andrew
  • A URL to a page describing the circumstances of his death, complete with links to the FAA report and where donations in lieu of flowers can be sent can be found at [puffin.com]
    http://www.puffin.com/puffin/lnz/Leonard.htm.

    Leonard was a good friend of mine. He will be missed.

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