It’s a sad moment for many Linux lovers when Linux evangelist and Linux.com editor Joe Barr passed away last night – July 11, 2008 – in his home. Many will miss Joe but probably not as much as his wife Susan. They were married only last year but knew each other for more than 10 years according to Linux.com.
Aside from being a Linux geek, Joe Barr is also an animal lover who’s fond of rescuing abandoned puppies. Knowing his love for animals, his wife Susan requested that donations be made to any animal rescue group in Joe’s name instead of sending flowers.
A former programmer, Barr has worked on everything from microcomputers like the TRS-80 Model I to IBM mainframes with acres of DASD, writing code in more than a dozen languages, including RPG II, 370 ALC, COBOL, BASIC, TIBOL, MASM, and C. Much of that experience coming in his 13 years with Ross Perot’s EDS.
As a writer, Barr first gained notoriety and, according to Ziff-Davis’ Spencer F. Katt, a cult-like following for his zine, The Dweebspeak Primer.[citation needed] Barr began writing about personal computing in 1994, and primarily about Linux and open source in 1998, when he began writing for IDG’s LinuxWorld.com. The MPlayer project made him even better known by dedicating a derogatory page to him in their documentation after he wrote a piece entitled MPlayer: the project from hell.
Source: Wikipedia
Such a man will surely be missed by the whole opensource community.
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