FreeBSD-Committer John Birrell verstorben

Yamagi

Possessed With Psi Powers
Staff member
John Birrell, langjähriger FreeBSD-Committer, ist am 20. November 2009 an einem Schlaganfall verstorben. Ich möchte hier gar nicht viel schreiben, denn ich kannte ihn schlicht nicht persönlich, daher reiche ich nur den von seinem Kollegen und Freund Craig Rodrigues verfassten Nachruf durch. John Birrell hatte in der Vergangenheit an vielen Bereichen von FreeBSD gearbeitet, man kannte ihn vor allem für den inzwischen durch das Ende der Alpha-Prozessoren eingestellten FreeBSD/alpha Port, sowie für DTrace. Aber dies ist nur ein kleiner Teil seiner Arbeit, welche auch libc_r, libdwarf und vieles anderes umfasst.

Code:
  Dear Friends,                                                                 
                                                                                
  It is with great sadness that I announce the passing of FreeBSD               
  committer John Birrell <jb@freebsd.org>.                                      
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
  John Birrell  / jb@freebsd.org                                                
                                                                                
  BACKGROUND                                                                    
  ==========                                                                    
  John Birrell was a Unix developer since 1988 and a FreeBSD user since         
  version 1.0.5.                                                                
  He had a Bachelor Degree in Engineering (Electrical, First Class Honours,     
  1981)                                                                         
  from Monash University in Australia.                                          
                                                                                
  Over the years he developed with various commercial Unix variants such as     
  SysVR2/3,                                                                     
  Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, OSF/1 and SCO and several embedded operatings systems    
  like VxWorks, LynxOS and Microware's OS9.                                     
                                                                                
  In the open source world he was once a user of NetBSD and OpenBSD in          
  addition to FreeBSD.                                                          
  Afterwards, he preferred just to use FreeBSD.                                 
                                                                                
  In 20 years of consulting he worked in the automotive, building materials,    
  pharmaceutical, petrochemical, telecommunications, defence and business       
  systems industries.                                                           
                                                                                
  John worked on an oil rig in China, for Ford in Australia, and for other      
  customers                                                                     
  in Philippines and other parts of Asia.                                       
                                                                                
  While on a business trip visiting his employer Juniper Networks in            
  Sunnyvale, California,                                                        
  U.S.A., John suffered a stroke, and passed away on November 20, 2009.         
                                                                                
                                                                                
  FREEBSD CONTRIBUTIONS                                                         
  =====================                                                         
                                                                                
  John Birrell was a member of the FreeBSD project, for over 12 years,          
  and could commit to the FreeBSD source code.  John felt passionately          
  about FreeBSD, and his contributions to this software project were many and   
  varied:                                                                       
                                                                                
  - port of Sun's DTrace to FreeBSD (2007)                                      
  - contributed BSD licensed libdwarf to FreeBSD  (2008)                        
  - contributed initial implementation of FreeBSD on DEC Alpha, from NetBSD     
  (1998)                                                                        
      -> this was the first 64-bit OS that FreeBSD ran on                       
  - contributed original libc_r pthread implementation to FreeBSD before KSE    
  (1998)                                                                        
  - contributed to port of Sun UltraSPARC-T1 (Niagara) to FreeBSD (2005)        
                                                                                
  John also participated as a mentor in the Google Summer of Code project.      
  For Google Summer of Code, John mentored students in various FreeBSD          
  projects that were funded by Google.  Mentoring new developers and            
  colleagues                                                                    
  was something that John felt very strongly about.                             
                                                                                
  John also liked to attend BSD conferences.  In May 2009, I attended           
  the BSDCan conference with John in Ottawa, Canada.  He was in his element,    
  and had many interesting and animated discussions with other FreeBSD          
  developers,                                                                   
  including people like Randall Stewart.                                        
                                                                                
                                                                                
  JBUILD                                                                        
  ======                                                                        
  As part of John's work at Juniper Networks in 2008, John started working      
  on a project called jbuild.  jbuild is a modification of the                  
  FreeBSD make(1) utility, which adds improved dependency tracking as a first   
  level feature, by tracking read/write system calls of all invoked utilities,  
  either by using DTrace, or by using a special kernel module named filemon.    
                                                                                
  At Juniper, the project is ongoing and will be deployed as part of the        
  software build at Juniper next year.                                          
                                                                                
  Although this work was started in response to needs at Juniper,               
  John was quite passionate about pushing this work back to FreeBSD, in order   
  to improve the FreeBSD build.  John observed that in FreeBSD,                 
  a "make universe" which verifies that all code changes work on all            
  architectures takes so long that very few people actually do it, so           
  less popular architectures often get broken.  John also observed that         
  by simplifying a "make universe" and other "buildworld" targets often         
  rebuilds a lot of things unnecessarily, due to the fact that it is "safer"    
  to do so, because the dependencies are not tracked as accurately as they      
  could be.                                                                     
                                                                                
  John has a branch in the FreeBSD svn repo for building all of FreeBSD with    
  jbuild here:                                                                  
                                                                                
  http://svn.freebsd.org/viewvc/base/projects/jbuild/                           
                                                                                
  I will update this branch as I have time, but it would be nice if folks in    
  the FreeBSD community could keep this work alive.                             
                                                                                
  John was keen that distributions like PC-BSD could adopt jbuild.              
  John wanted to simplify the FreeBSD build, to make it easier                  
  for people to make new distributions based on FreeBSD.                        
                                                                                
  Let me know if you want to learn more about any of this stuff.                
                                                                                
                                                                                
  PERSONAL                                                                      
  ========                                                                      
                                                                                
  John lived alone on a 118 acre rural property in Apollo Bay, Australia,       
  which                                                                         
  is on the southeastern coast of Australia, approximately 4 hours from         
  Melbourne.                                                                    
                                                                                
  His house was not connected to the local grid.....his water supply            
  was obtained from tanks on his roof which were filled with rainwater.         
  His electricity was supplied by solar cells.                                  
                                                                                
  On one trip to Sunnyvale in 2008, he bought an alcohol distilling device      
  which he brought back home.  His goal was to try to grow potato and sugar     
  beets on his property, and distill them into alcohol, so that he              
  could fuel is car with ethanol instead of gasoline, thus having               
  a very minimal carbon footprint.                                              
                                                                                
  John was also passionate about animal welfare.  He owned a few                
  cats, and just bought a puppy dog in 2009.  In 2008, when massive fires       
  swept much of the Australian countryside, he took time                        
  off of Juniper to volunteer with Wildlife Victoria.                           
  This organization provided assistance to many animals who suffered            
  during the fires, such as kangaroos, wallabies, and even pets                 
  of people who abandoned their properties when fleeing the fires.              
                                                                                
  John also liked motorcycles.  He told me stories about how he                 
  motorcycled around Asia many years ago.  He was also hoping                   
  to buy a motorcycle to garage in California, so that he could                 
  drive it whenever he visited Sunnyvale.                                       
                                                                                
                                                                                
  WORKING WITH JOHN                                                             
  =================                                                             
                                                                                
  I worked very closely with John over the past year.                           
  I was in constant communication with John over IRC chat,                      
  and Skype.  I also Skyped John into many meetings, to keep                    
  him up to date on the pulse of what was going on in Juniper.                  
  Although John was in a remote place, he felt like he was                      
  in the cube next to me.                                                       
                                                                                
  John was very patient with me and took the time to explain point by point     
  what he                                                                       
  was trying to achieve with jbuild and why it solved legitimate problems       
  with make(1) based builds.                                                    
                                                                                
  John also had taste for good "expensive" food and fine wine.                  
  In 2009, as thanks for my help in working on jbuild,                          
  John treated me to a sumptuous and expensive meal at                          
  Sent Sovi Restaurant, in Saratoga, California, U.S.A......a fond memory for   
  me. :)                                                                        
                                                                                
  John was one of the smartest engineers that I have ever worked                
  with, and was a mentor and friend.                                            
                                                                                
                                                                                
  SUMMARY                                                                       
  =======                                                                       
                                                                                
  I am going to miss talking to John every day on IRC, hearing interesting      
  stories                                                                       
  about living in rural Australia, and solving new and challenging              
  technical problems with him.  His passion really pushed me to work very hard  
  on jbuild,                                                                    
  and learn new things.  I will miss him as a colleague, mentor, and friend.    
                                                                                
  --                                                                            
  Craig Rodrigues                                                               
  rodrigc@FreeBSD.org
 
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