Joey has written a sad and moving open letter to Gene.
Dear Gene,
You don't know me very well. We met only once, at that debutante cotillion of peer-to-peer developers that they called the O'Reilly Peer-To-Peer Conference in San Fran back in February 2001. I was the guy from OpenCola with the accordion. You know, the annoying one.
I don't know you very well either — I just know of your involvement with Gnutella, then gonesilent, and then Sun, where you got brought onto the JXTA project. Part of my job at OpenCola, being the Developer Relations guy, was to schmooze other developers. It was my job to keep in touch with guys like you and find areas in which our companies could collaborate. To that end, I kept records of not only what projects you were working on, but also those little niggly personal touches — your likes, dislikes, and so on. The kind of thing that Malcolm Gladwell said that "connectors" do. For instance, for this gentleman, I have "Likes heavier, darker, gothier music. Martial arts. Allergic to chicken."
(All that shows up in my notes for you is "Likes cars. Dresses up for conferences. Sardonic." I don't know if you'd like that summary or not, but I can imagine you going "ha!" in response.)
(via Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)
