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Auto Accident at SANE Conference Kills One
Several people have submitted news from SANE 2004 that a car crash involving several Free Software developers has killed one and injured two others. Richard Stallman was in the car earlier but apparently had been dropped off prior to the accident.
My deepest sympathy to the family and friends of the loved one they lost.
Car accident details
There have been a bunch of rumours about a car accident involving some free software folks today. Since there seems to be no central place for all information I am trying to gather all information here.
If you have any other information please drop me an email at wichert@wiggy.net
All mentioned times are in CEST (UTC +0200).
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There has been a car accident returning from a trip to bring Richard
Stallman (RMS) from
SANE 2004 to Paris.
(confirmed by several sources)
-
they collided with a truck which merged onto their lane while
driving in fog (unconfirmed)
-
Exact time of the accident is unknown. It was on the
morning of September 30th before 09:00.
-
Richard Stallman was dropped off in Paris and no longer in the car
(confirmed by Rop and Richard).
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At the time of the accident Hans Bakker (mclightje),
Edwin Hermans (madeddie), and
Sebastian S. (webmind) were in the car. (confirmed).
-
The car belongs to Rop Gonggrijp, who lent it to the travelers.
RMS was staying with Rop during SANE. (confirmed by Rop)
-
Hans Bakker (photo,
homepage)
did not survive the crash. (confirmed by girlfriend)
-
Edwin Hermans has a broken hip and has been transfered to a different
hospital for surgery. Sebastian is (or was by now) in surgery for
broken bones but is not in critical condition.
Bad information-
This Yahoo
France accident report is from another accident which occured
later and the car was traveling in the wrong direction
Press..and the first 3 posts I see are jokes about it.
Shit. I know one of those guys. It's messed up to read something like that on /.
Some people deal by making jokes. That's quite normal.
Slashdot has a strange focus on issues of free software, an accident that killed one developer and could have potentially killed one of the founding fathers of the movement (Stallman aka Mr. GNU, Mr. GPL) makes it news. Even though Slashdot isn't generally an obituary site, I'd like to question why the person would have to be "important" for you to mourn them, a man with a girlfriend and a family passed away tragically. Do you need to know anymore to feel a pang of sorrow? Does he have to be a celebrity to make it important?
Sorry for the moral/ethical tirade, but maybe it'll give the moderators of this post and the poster himself something to think about.
The report says that the accident occured after dropping off Richard, this trip was specifically to bring him to Paris. I know in his place, I'd be blaming myself, that's my nature.
For what it's worth : It wasn't your fault Mr. Stallman, so don't blame yourself. And my sympathies to the families involved.
Seriously. Someone is dead. Two others are injured.
/.
People die every day. Seriously. Many of them children. Many of them after living lives of such desperate poverty that most of us cannot even imagine it except in vague abstract terms.
In my mind crocodile tears over people who you do not know, and whom you only care about because they're linked to a famous person are far more patronising and -frankly- downright insulting to the very real, very person suffering and grief that they are going through than if I had made a beowulf cluster of first post jokes about how the OSS movment will start wearing tin-foil hats and start looking for MS-assasins behind every grassy knoll.
Their suffering is real.
But your outrage is contrived and your "grief" is a grief of convience.
If Dick Stallman's name wasn't linked to this; no-one would give a shit --and that's the only reason this is on
Hans Bakker was the organizer of several NE2000 camps. Ne2000 is a yearly event where about 200 people show up with their tents/campers/caravans and plug into the network, it's a fairly open source oriented happening. I've seen and spoken Hans around there although I wasn't a close friend of him or anything. He has also participated in several open source projects.
The people involved in this car accident are all from the same fairly big group of "young" open source fans in The Netherlands that keep contact with each other over IRC and also IRL. Therefore I'm not surprised that this story was submitted by several readers. I hope this explains why it is important, I know I was shocked and saddened by the loss.
Some people deal by making jokes. That's quite normal.
And some people are just irreverent, insensitive dorks. That's quite normal as well, but its normalcy doesn't mean we should encourage or otherwise condone their social incompetency.
Jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
For those of us who are not as religous:
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
-Isaac Asimov
In this case his transition was swift and for that I am happy. My condolances to his family and the community for our loss.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
It's a lovely poem, by Eden Philpotts. I think it makes a very appropriate dept.
GHOSTIES AT THE WEDDING.
Turn down a glass afore his place;
Draw up the dog-eared chair;
For though we shall not see his face,
I think he will be here
Our wedding day to share.
Turn up the glass where she would be
And put a red rose there.
Her quick, grey eyes we cannot see,
But weren't they everywhere,
And shall not they be here?
Though them old blids are in the grave
And their good light's gone out,
We'd sooner their kind ghosties have
Than all the living rout
As will be there no doubt.
For some are dead as cannot die.
Some flown as cannot flee.
You still do fancy 'em near by.
'Tis so with him and she,
At any rate to we.
"The Milliard Gargantubrain? A mere abacus - mention it not."
However, with all of the SUV bashing you see on this site, it should be mentioned that they are the safest vehicles on the road.
Bullshit.
While it's true that if you are in a huge SUV and hit a car, the SUV will come off better, the overall safety picture is not good for SUV drivers.
The additional mass also has downsides. In single vehicle accidents it's better to have less mass as there is less energy to dissipate. According to the NHTSA, single vehicle accidents accounted for only 18% of crashes, but 44% of fatalities.
Larger vehicles have longer stopping distances, increasing the likelyhood of a crash.
Also figures from the NHSTA show that SUV fatality rates are 11% higher than cars.
According to those statistics, the safest vehicles are minivans, with a fatality rate of 2.76 per billion miles travelled, 2nd were large cars, with a rate of 3.3 fatalities per billion miles. The largest SUV's came in 3rd with 3.79 fatalities per billion miles
time to adjust your review mirror methinks
"... every live comes to an end, when time demands it. Loss of life is to be morned, but only if the life was wasted."
-Volcan Proverb
Hans Bakker's Life was not a waste. My sympathies.
I saw this accident scene this morning. Driving back from Paris to Brussels, there was a large traffic jam which took about 20 minutes to get through. The accident occured just after a rest stop, just after the point where the rest stop traffic merges back into the autoroute. Since its where I usually stop for a rest about an hour north of Paris, I can imagine they either stopped for a rest and were merging back onto the autoroute, or else they got caught in a bunch of trucks scooting around someone merging slowly. Lots of accidents happen at the far end of rest areas. It was pretty foggy this morning, its that season.
There was quite a bit of heavy equipment on the scene, a mobile crane on the slip road, and a bucket-crane truck with a dump truck picking up what was left of the one truck's load, it looked like scrap metal. There was the cab and remnants of a trailer, very shredded, on flatbed trucks on the slip road. There was obviously a fire, since parts of the guard rail were burned, and the asphalt was scorched. There were some Pompiers (firefighters) and about a dozen Gendarmes from the B.E.A (Bureau d'Enquetes Accidents) standing around, but they had obviously finished all of their report gathering by 10:30 AM when I passed.
I know Rop, and I've probably met the others at various linux/hac-tic/2600/CCC/EC patent protest events. My heart goes out to the families and loved ones of those involved, and here is wishes for a speedy recovery for the injured. This accident affects all of us in the techie, hacker-in-the-good-sense-of-the-word, and linux scenes here in Europe. Lets remember Hans for the good things he accomplished in his life.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on