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A man who dares waste and hour of time,
does not yet know the value of life – Charles Darwin
It is with great regret that I tell you
of the death of Chris Lee in Auckland this weekend. Those of you who
knew Chris will know him as a hard working and dedicated contributor
to the TurboCASH project.
Chris was the biggest contributor to
the TurboCASH forum, helped with the web site backend and led the Cloud
computing project with GoPC.net. Chris also worked with other
consultants in New Zealand to make TurboCASH a local success story.
New Zealand is a small market, but nevertheless one in which
TurboCASH enjoys a high market share.
A highlight for me, a year ago was
Chris skyping me to sign onto a 386 machine he had running in his
garage, with a stripped down version of Linux, Wine and TurboCASH. It
was exillerating to run TurboCASH from Cape Town, over such vast
distances and with such limited resources. This was the birth of
cloud computing for us.
It is a privilege to have worked with
Chris, who never, in all my dealings, with him ever alluded to ill
health or ever asked for compensation for his contributions to the
project. It is a testament that right up until the day he died Chris
was making contributions
to the TurboCASH forum. People like this, make me proud that what
we do here at the TurboCASH project - is change the world.
It is strange how the Interent has
changed our lives and brought distant people close to us. In the
three years that I worked with Chris I barely talked to him. Our
interactions were through email and the web site. There was no need
to talk to Chris, he simply got it and got on with it. He is one of
the rare gems that drive the open source industry and we will all be
poorer with his passing. Information is free, contributions are priceless.
Chris we will miss you.
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