8 ms·

Goodbye Marco

567 points by SnaKeZ 11y ago

ekianjo 11y ago
Evince is my favorite PDF reader on Linux. Sad to see that his original author is gone :(
- jgeraert 11y ago
  Also on windows.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    Yeah. Well most Linux software is kind of multiplatform anyway, or at least portable. My reason for citing Linux here more than Windows is that Evince was included by default in many distros.
- lottin 11y ago
  The original Evince was and still is my favourite PDF reader too. Unfortunately the newer versions feature a Gnome 3-style UI that renders the program unusable for me. Anyway, I hope he had a happy life. RIP.
  - Pluizer 11y ago
    Take a look at Mate's Atril: https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Indeed. I've found xpdf is OK for quickly viewing most PDFs, but Evince is the only one I've found that has decent support for form-fill-in.
pan69 11y ago
I had this weird thought the other day, not sure if it makes sense; We all think that one day we'll grow old, we see old people around us all the time so I guess we assume one day we'll be one of them. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be true for many of us. Goodbye Marco. May you rest in peace. And to you my friends, smell the flowers while you can.
- manlio 11y ago
  I know the feeling. We're somehow wired to blindly believe in the decades ahead of us for so many aspect of our lives -- be it compound interest or love affairs. The most peculiar aftermath of losing somebody you love way too early is this sort of spell being irremediably broken. You start being skeptical about even the not-so-distant future, because you can't help but feel it might won't be for you after all. It's not even a good or bad thing on its own, you've always known it was part of the game: the sun rises, bigger animals eat smaller animals, tides come in and out; yet learning to live with it on your skin affects you deeply. Anyway, thanks for your comment.
- kayoone 11y ago
  It's not a weird thought at all, after all that's life. While the odds of you growing old outweigh the odds of a short life (average life expectancy is around 80 in western countries) it still happens frequently that people die too soon, for whatever reason. Yet most of us focus all of our energy and motivation on a time in the future when we have hopefully achieved X, while forgetting to enjoy the present in a meaningful way. That is kind of normal because the human psyche tries to ignore too negative thoughts and it's probably the best way not get too depressive about life as a whole. It's similar to how we do not really care about people far away that have a really tough life or anything that does not directly impact our own lives.
- jbeales 11y ago
  > And to you my friends, smell the flowers while you can. I'm 35, and I've already lost at least 4 friends. Causes of death: Drunk driving, Suicide, Murder, and bacterial infection/dropped dead. The friend with the infection was a super-healthy woman who was opening a fitness studio, one of those people that you would expect to grow old, not catch a random bug and die.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    What bug? This is something of a fear of mine, especially after my wife received a MRSA infection a few years ago.
aurora72 11y ago
RIP. Btw a small note on cancer: a carefully controlled Ph balance helps cure cancer all naturally. For more info google cancer ph
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
tluyben2 11y ago
So sorry to hear this; Evince rocks! On a side note, as someone with cancer i'm getting more and more annoyed with people saying 'lost the fight' 'after a long fight' etc. Somehow (and I know more people have this) it makes it feel like you didn't try hard enough. Stop saying that please.
- bodhi 11y ago
  > Stop saying that please. Might come across as snarky, but really meaning not to: What's an expression that would be more acceptable?
  - tluyben2 11y ago
    Well, if you die of something else, these terms are not used. Or maybe I didn't see, but you don't say 'after fighting alzheimers' 'after fighting ALS' etc, they just say; he/she died of X. That feels more fair than taking some kind of process into account whereby one gets the feeling that if you had battled harder you would've come out on top. For many cancers this is simply not the case yet; I was 'lucky', he was not, but that's all it is. It has not much to do with fighting IMHO.
    - bodhi 11y ago
      > they just say; he/she died of X That's what my sneaking suspicion was. I recall having heard expressions like "after a long battle with illness", but your point makes a lot of sense. Actually, I realise there's no mention of losing in that expression, which was made clear to me after finding this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carole-brody-fleet/long-term-illness_b_2051071.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carole-brody-fleet/long-term-i... after searching Google for the above phrase.
    - csbrooks 11y ago
      Interesting point. I wonder if one reason for the difference in language is that chemotherapy is so brutal that it ends up feeling like a "battle". Plus maybe that there's a chance of "winning", which isn't there with Alzheimer's or with ALS. (I'm not justifying the correctness of the word, just speculating on the cause.)
dmritard96 11y ago
This is sad news as this he has obviously made some really great software and shared it with the community. At the risk of threadjacking - I am always curious how evince and others are funded (if at all)? Is it corporately sponosored, completely volunteer, backed by a foundation. And following that up, if it is backed by a foundation, which ones generally give the most? Just trying to figure out how the money for opensource relates to things I know and use everyday.
chheplo 11y ago
Deepest condolences
amyjess 11y ago
Oh man... Marco created Galeon, which was my favorite browser back in the 1.2 days. He'll be missed.
- jdoss 11y ago
  Galeon was my favorite too. The best thing about it was you could bookmark search dialog boxes and it would show a search dialog box right in the bookmark bar From there, you could search for something and it would open up a new tab. It may not seem like a lot, but my coworkers and sped up our workflows by quite a lot once we figured this out back in the day.
kentf 11y ago
Started a tilt for his family if anyone wants to donate: https://www.tilt.com/campaigns/for-marco-pesenti-grittis-family https://www.tilt.com/campaigns/for-marco-pesenti-grittis-fam...
- uml 11y ago
  Is it in Growth Engineering 101 to exploit a family tragedy?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    Growth Engineering 101 is to exploit everything that is exploitable. (Sometimes, though, what is exploitable is the public appearance of restraint in an obvious opportunity for exploitation, but that's probably 201 -- or at least 102 -- level.)
lmedinas 11y ago
Has a former GNOME Fundation member I would like to wish my deepest condolences to his family. It's very sad to see someone leave us so young. The FOSS lost a great mind, his work will was/is/will be in our Linux Desktop for some time. Thank you Marco!
stkni 11y ago
I remember reading somewhere (I forget where) that making software has the ability to improve change/many lives and that alone makes software development, but especially open source, a useful endeavour. How great it is then, that now I know who to thank for Evince. So sad that he's not here to receive my thanks.

Goodbye Marco

567 points by SnaKeZ 11y ago

ekianjo 11y ago

Evince is my favorite PDF reader on Linux. Sad to see that his original author is gone :(

jgeraert 11y ago
Also on windows.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  Yeah. Well most Linux software is kind of multiplatform anyway, or at least portable. My reason for citing Linux here more than Windows is that Evince was included by default in many distros.
lottin 11y ago
The original Evince was and still is my favourite PDF reader too. Unfortunately the newer versions feature a Gnome 3-style UI that renders the program unusable for me. Anyway, I hope he had a happy life. RIP.
- Pluizer 11y ago
  Take a look at Mate's Atril: https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril.
ams6110 11y ago
Indeed. I've found xpdf is OK for quickly viewing most PDFs, but Evince is the only one I've found that has decent support for form-fill-in.

pan69 11y ago

I had this weird thought the other day, not sure if it makes sense; We all think that one day we'll grow old, we see old people around us all the time so I guess we assume one day we'll be one of them. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be true for many of us. Goodbye Marco. May you rest in peace. And to you my friends, smell the flowers while you can.

manlio 11y ago
I know the feeling. We're somehow wired to blindly believe in the decades ahead of us for so many aspect of our lives -- be it compound interest or love affairs. The most peculiar aftermath of losing somebody you love way too early is this sort of spell being irremediably broken. You start being skeptical about even the not-so-distant future, because you can't help but feel it might won't be for you after all. It's not even a good or bad thing on its own, you've always known it was part of the game: the sun rises, bigger animals eat smaller animals, tides come in and out; yet learning to live with it on your skin affects you deeply. Anyway, thanks for your comment.
kayoone 11y ago
It's not a weird thought at all, after all that's life. While the odds of you growing old outweigh the odds of a short life (average life expectancy is around 80 in western countries) it still happens frequently that people die too soon, for whatever reason. Yet most of us focus all of our energy and motivation on a time in the future when we have hopefully achieved X, while forgetting to enjoy the present in a meaningful way. That is kind of normal because the human psyche tries to ignore too negative thoughts and it's probably the best way not get too depressive about life as a whole. It's similar to how we do not really care about people far away that have a really tough life or anything that does not directly impact our own lives.
jbeales 11y ago
> And to you my friends, smell the flowers while you can. I'm 35, and I've already lost at least 4 friends. Causes of death: Drunk driving, Suicide, Murder, and bacterial infection/dropped dead. The friend with the infection was a super-healthy woman who was opening a fitness studio, one of those people that you would expect to grow old, not catch a random bug and die.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  What bug? This is something of a fear of mine, especially after my wife received a MRSA infection a few years ago.

aurora72 11y ago

RIP. Btw a small note on cancer: a carefully controlled Ph balance helps cure cancer all naturally. For more info google cancer ph

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

tluyben2 11y ago

So sorry to hear this; Evince rocks! On a side note, as someone with cancer i'm getting more and more annoyed with people saying 'lost the fight' 'after a long fight' etc. Somehow (and I know more people have this) it makes it feel like you didn't try hard enough. Stop saying that please.

bodhi 11y ago
> Stop saying that please. Might come across as snarky, but really meaning not to: What's an expression that would be more acceptable?
- tluyben2 11y ago
  Well, if you die of something else, these terms are not used. Or maybe I didn't see, but you don't say 'after fighting alzheimers' 'after fighting ALS' etc, they just say; he/she died of X. That feels more fair than taking some kind of process into account whereby one gets the feeling that if you had battled harder you would've come out on top. For many cancers this is simply not the case yet; I was 'lucky', he was not, but that's all it is. It has not much to do with fighting IMHO.
  - bodhi 11y ago
    > they just say; he/she died of X That's what my sneaking suspicion was. I recall having heard expressions like "after a long battle with illness", but your point makes a lot of sense. Actually, I realise there's no mention of losing in that expression, which was made clear to me after finding this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carole-brody-fleet/long-term-illness_b_2051071.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carole-brody-fleet/long-term-i... after searching Google for the above phrase.
  - csbrooks 11y ago
    Interesting point. I wonder if one reason for the difference in language is that chemotherapy is so brutal that it ends up feeling like a "battle". Plus maybe that there's a chance of "winning", which isn't there with Alzheimer's or with ALS. (I'm not justifying the correctness of the word, just speculating on the cause.)

dmritard96 11y ago

This is sad news as this he has obviously made some really great software and shared it with the community. At the risk of threadjacking - I am always curious how evince and others are funded (if at all)? Is it corporately sponosored, completely volunteer, backed by a foundation. And following that up, if it is backed by a foundation, which ones generally give the most? Just trying to figure out how the money for opensource relates to things I know and use everyday.

chheplo 11y ago

Deepest condolences

amyjess 11y ago

Oh man... Marco created Galeon, which was my favorite browser back in the 1.2 days. He'll be missed.

jdoss 11y ago
Galeon was my favorite too. The best thing about it was you could bookmark search dialog boxes and it would show a search dialog box right in the bookmark bar From there, you could search for something and it would open up a new tab. It may not seem like a lot, but my coworkers and sped up our workflows by quite a lot once we figured this out back in the day.

kentf 11y ago

Started a tilt for his family if anyone wants to donate: https://www.tilt.com/campaigns/for-marco-pesenti-grittis-family https://www.tilt.com/campaigns/for-marco-pesenti-grittis-fam...

uml 11y ago
Is it in Growth Engineering 101 to exploit a family tragedy?
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Growth Engineering 101 is to exploit everything that is exploitable. (Sometimes, though, what is exploitable is the public appearance of restraint in an obvious opportunity for exploitation, but that's probably 201 -- or at least 102 -- level.)

lmedinas 11y ago

Has a former GNOME Fundation member I would like to wish my deepest condolences to his family. It's very sad to see someone leave us so young. The FOSS lost a great mind, his work will was/is/will be in our Linux Desktop for some time. Thank you Marco!

stkni 11y ago

I remember reading somewhere (I forget where) that making software has the ability to improve change/many lives and that alone makes software development, but especially open source, a useful endeavour. How great it is then, that now I know who to thank for Evince. So sad that he's not here to receive my thanks.