[HN Gopher] Jorg Schilling has died
___________________________________________________________________
Jorg Schilling has died
Author : stargrave
Score : 493 points
Date : 2021-10-11 12:04 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (minnie.tuhs.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (minnie.tuhs.org)
| antirez wrote:
| "May his software immortalise him."
|
| I wish this was true just a bit. Software goes away with the time
| almost like no other human artifact.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >I wish this was true just a bit. Software goes away with the
| time almost like no other human artifact.
|
| You might be surprised. Vernor Vinge's _A Deepness in the Sky_
| (recently discussed here) describes in some detail the job
| position of programmer archaeologist (
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_archaeology>).
| rob74 wrote:
| Sad but true, that was also my first thought when reading this
| sentence. Especially since he is best known for writing CD/DVD
| recording software. Small anecdote: this March, I have upgraded
| my desktop PC, and the new motherboard doesn't have a PATA
| port, so I haven't been able to use my Plextor CD/DVD recorder
| anymore for a few months. But I haven't really missed it enough
| to get me to buy a PATA interface card. And even before, I was
| only using it to rip audio CDs - I can't really remember when I
| burned my last CD (or was it a DVD?)...
| alias_neo wrote:
| I mean, unless it's a particularly special PATA drive, why
| not get a SATA BD-Writer?
|
| I have a USB-3.1 BluRay writer I use for burning 50GB-100GB
| BDs with family photos/videos (alongside other media).
|
| The downside is that buying a portable HDD is significantly
| cheaper TB for TB but I feel they'll fail quicker, who knows,
| so I keep copies on both.
| toyg wrote:
| _> buying a portable HDD is significantly cheaper TB for TB
| but I feel they 'll fail quicker_
|
| It depends on your usage model. If you "burn" a HDD and
| store it in a drawer, then pull it back after 15 years,
| chances are it will work fine - whereas the CD might well
| have lost a lot of data. It might not be cheaper per TB,
| though.
| alias_neo wrote:
| It's an interesting problem, but obviously not one in
| willing to guess at.
|
| I guess I'll find out in 20 years or so which lasted
| longer.
|
| The video cassettes my parents recorded my childhood on
| in the 80s and 90s are still going strong, I don't know
| if modern media will last as well.
|
| The pen drive my wedding photographer gave us our
| photographs on was used exactly once, I tried it ~5 years
| later and it's was dead.
|
| I suppose each form of media has its issues so I'm simply
| trying not to rely on any single technology.
| strenholme wrote:
| I think flash drives and SSDs decay a lot more quickly
| than traditional magnetic HDDs, and may decay more
| quickly than CDRs.
|
| As a practical matter, I can generally read 20-year-old
| CDRs I burned just fine (I have only had issues with
| cheap CDR blanks, such as Fry's old house brand); for
| things I want to last long-term, I use archival grade CDR
| blanks.
| alias_neo wrote:
| I've been burning to Blu-ray and putting a sha256sum file
| on the disc with the contents so that in theory, I can
| check the sums every so often and re-burn them to
| increase the longevity.
|
| Granted I have not been using archival grade Blu-ray's
| because the cost to store terabytes is prohibitive.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| But we know who he was, in the nerd-sphere.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Bad software sticks around forever though.
| verytrivial wrote:
| I clearly burned a lot of CD-Rs in my day because I immediately
| recognised that surname but didn't know why. Condolences to his
| loved ones.
| otherflavors wrote:
| http://schilytools.sourceforge.net/index.php
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Besides cdrecord, he created several other high quality tools. I
| especially remember star, a tar with features that made it much
| better suitable for real-world tape backups than GNU tar. A
| friend used it to implement a backup system.
|
| I think people in the German nerdsphere had an affection for him
| because he was a fanatical fan of Solaris, which he liked to get
| into in all kinds of situations, notably in heated comments on
| heise.de. It was kind of cute to see such an obviously
| intelligent guy behave like that. Many geeks and nerds have
| things that they care much more about than would be considered
| "normal", after all.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Do you know why those features never got adopted into GNU tar?
| st_goliath wrote:
| Perhaps not _on the surface_. GNU tar, for instance, to this
| day uses the pax header fields introduced by star for storing
| extended attributes.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| I don't. But I think it was something about splitting an
| archive over multiple tapes and / or modifying such archives.
| jzb wrote:
| I haven't thought about him in ages, or cdrtools, but I benefited
| heavily from his software once upon a time. The cdrtools
| flamewars seem positively quaint these days. Clearly a talented
| developer and his work definitely was a help in open source
| catching on.
| badRNG wrote:
| Isn't this the sort of death that warrants the HN black bar?
| cnst wrote:
| Very nice guy!
|
| I will remember him for his CDDL flames and my invitation for him
| to answer the CDDL/GPL debate over at the brand new SE OSS site
| right at the launch in 2015, which he gladly accepted.
|
| I vaguely recall making this question explicitly for him to
| answer, seeing that he was already on the site, and me needing a
| total of 10 QA entries to get an Area51 badge for a follow-
| through on the launch of the site as a founding member. He didn't
| disappoint and provided a great answer!
|
| He was not shy of having a good argument and defending the
| position he thought was correct even if such position was
| extremely unpopular and futile to have and to defend:
|
| https://archive.is/4JzAE
|
| https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/2094/are-cddl...
|
| Very sad to learn he's gone. RIP.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's unfortunate that we'll probably _never_ get a legal answer
| to the question from _any_ authority - but it appears that more
| and more people are considering them to be "compatible enough"
| - see Ubuntu shipping ZFS in the default image.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| It boils down to being a contractual dispute, and until the
| stakeholders decide to spent the millions of dollars to
| battle it in courts, it'll remain an unanswered question.
|
| Of course, the difficulty of many GPL projects is in
| _identifying_ the stakeholders, and getting them to agree on
| action.
|
| The real risk comes from OpenZFS, where the majority of the
| copyright is held by Oracle (formerly Sun). Oracle is an
| evil, _evil_ organization in regards to IP, so I can only
| assume their reason for not taking action is 1) it 's not
| worth their time or 2) they're waiting until a big wealthy
| organization depends on it before they can spring their trap.
| TheDesolate0 wrote:
| A true software hero was lost today.
|
| My deepest condolences to the family and friends.
| ismaildonmez wrote:
| We had our differences, but in the end he was a great developer.
| May he Rest In Peace.
| kleiba wrote:
| We will of course also remember him for his flames.
|
| No kidding. I remember pretty well the cdrecord drama back in the
| day if only from a distance.
|
| Very sad to hear this news. RIP.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| What was the drama?
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| Aside form the licence stuff already linked there were also
| endless flamewars on how to specify devices when invoking his
| tools. Schilling was a proponent of SCSI-adressing, and
| pretty much everyone else wanted to use /dev.
| chasil wrote:
| This seems like a clear analysis.
|
| https://lwn.net/Articles/195167/
| strenholme wrote:
| Hopefully, someone (maybe me) will step up to plate and
| maintain the Debian fork of CDR tools again, for
| Schilling's memory if nothing else (and to fix bugs, such
| as the issue with post-2027 CDR images [1] which I have
| already fixed).
|
| [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
| bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=990468
| cxr wrote:
| Follow up ("The unending story of cdrtools", 2009):
| <https://lwn.net/Articles/346540/>
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Profile: Jorg Schilling (2005)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28827572
| einpoklum wrote:
| I never interacted with Mr. Schilling, but when I saw the title,
| I was telling myself: "Jorg Schilling, Jorg Schilling, I know
| that name for sure" - then I remember: I would see that copyright
| notice a thousand times waiting on a mkisofs + cdrecord session
| back when GUI tools weren't quite there yet.
|
| In Hebrew they say: khbl `d dbdyn vl mshtkkhyn (well, technically
| it's part Aramaic)
|
| Rest In Piece and honor for paving important stretches of the
| road on which the world of software marches on.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I used star as part of my companies backups for many years.
|
| I loved his opinionation.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| RIP schily
|
| Uncompromising on software reliability, worthy of respect
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I recognise his name as something that flitted by on copyright
| pages, for tools that made my life easier, better, and for free.
|
| And sad though his passing is, it marks something else for me -
| that a person committed to "improving the world a little" is
| recognised _without_ having made billions in an IPO or become a
| media celebrity. Maybe we can all aim a little lower (or higher
| depending on how you see it) now.
|
| Thank you Jorg.
|
| Our condolences to your loved ones.
| knbknb wrote:
| I think his last posts on Heise.de Forums were from around Sep 18
| 2021. On heise.de he commented almost daily, on all sorts of
| topics.
| ktpsns wrote:
| Oh god, I remember cdrtools. It was such a cool software on the
| Linux desktop in the 2000s. Converting and Cloning CDs felt
| simple at Linux where it was notoriously challenging on Windows
| (I know I know. That's just my impression).
|
| Unfortunately I don't know the other projects of Jorg Schilling.
| solarengineer wrote:
| He created Schillix, the first opensolaris-based distro, before
| even Belenix.
| agumonkey wrote:
| rip-ping jorg
| anonymous201 wrote:
| He was my colleague several years ago, sitting just one door from
| mine (but not working on the same projects) He had an office with
| lot of hardware stacking up. I tried a few times to talked with
| him about new promising techs like Nix and Rust, to push him a
| bit outside of his boundaries. He did not really cared and
| derailed the conversation and asked if the Nix shell was POSIX
| compliant (I think it was more or less the situation, time has
| passed...). I didn't follow all the drama with regards to the
| licensing of his code but it was clear that he had strong
| opinions and it was not easy to change them.
|
| He was super specialized in C and Unix and I had a lot of respect
| that he used the same tech his whole career.
|
| You could not ignore him when he was in a room, he had a strong
| presence. I always saw him joyful. He used to told me some stupid
| jokes regularly also.
|
| My sincere condolences to everybody that will miss him.
| h2odragon wrote:
| I had a sparc 2000e, running solaris, with a 1tb disk array built
| of _many_ 23gb, 8lb monster SCSI disks that had already lived a
| long life in a TV stations video array. Spread over like a dozen
| SCSI controller channels. _slightly_ flaky.
|
| Many of the things I made that machine do were only possible to
| me because of Shilling's shared knowledge. Thanks for that.
|
| I shall burn a terminator in salute.
| jwildeboer wrote:
| I've had my share of flamewars with Jorg, as had many others. But
| it was always civilised and never went ad hominem. I will miss
| him. The few times we met in person, we had some good laughs
| about many things. Tough, but nice guy. Left too soon.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| His modest homepage: http://cdrtools.sourceforge.net/private/
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28826167
| c0balt wrote:
| Not really. Your linked post is referring to a retweet of the
| announcement by fuz (Robert Klausecker) on twitter (in German),
| while this thread is linking to his original post in english as
| email.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Note that "dupe" refers not just to a single link but to a
| given story. Generally the first submission is given
| preference, though here HN mods elected to stick with this
| later submission (there were several others posted within a
| few hours of each other).
|
| I agree that this is a more informative link.
| dmw_ng wrote:
| I think many can remember the sheer magic of their first cdrecord
| run (and the terror of producing a coaster). Instantly
| recognizable name, really sad news.
| markrages wrote:
| cdrecord first induced me to try Linux in 1997. I had spent
| $400 on the Sony 2x CD burner with the caddy but Windows wasn't
| stable enough to reliably burn a disc. cdrecord was free and
| worth changing operating systems for.
| europat wrote:
| I remember that magic as well and also that cdrtoools ran very
| stable - while buffer under-runs often ruined the then
| expensive CDRs on Windows. RIP and condolences to the family,
| he was one of the little known IT heroes despite probably
| millions having used his software.
| benjamir wrote:
| For years there was nothing else as dependable as cdrecord for
| me -- a true gift from a gifted. Sad news.
| smarks wrote:
| That's very sad. Like many others, I used `cdrecord` and
| `mkisofs` back in the day.
|
| But mainly I remember him for his work on SCCS. That code was
| AT&T proprietary for a long time, but it was open-sourced as part
| of OpenSolaris. Schilling made it portable and produced binaries
| for several platforms, including the Mac. He even gave some
| conference talks on this topic. By the time he did that work,
| most projects had already moved onto other version control
| systems. But there are older, closed-source histories of various
| projects (such as Java) that are still in SCCS, and I find his
| tools useful to this day for investigating those histories.
|
| Condolences to his family.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| https://nitter.kavin.rocks/LaF0rge/status/144747187482130433...
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| if I use Mastodon, is there a way I can re-toot that?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| You can share it as a link.
|
| There are also a few (one-way) bridge gateways.
|
| So ... kind of.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Damn, I remember working with him to bring cdrutils to solaris
| back in the day, he was quite no-nonsense but we had quite a lot
| of fun on irc poking around, star was always faster than gnutar
| too.
|
| Will raise a glass to you tonight, friend.
| Sharat_Chander wrote:
| RIP Schily
| strenholme wrote:
| First of all, compassion and condolences for Schilling's family.
|
| Second of all, I had a very recent positive interaction with him.
| I recently was in contact with Mr. Schilling to report a bug in
| CDR tools. Even though he was (looking back) dying, he was very
| prompt in replying to me and discussing the bug with me over
| email. However, even though I gave him a fix, he was unable to
| apply it, probably because of his poor health.
|
| Thirdly, there is a really serious bug in CDR tools: It will
| start creating bad timestamps in 2028. That's not a typo: 2028 (
| _not_ 2038). Because of how ISO 9660 filesystems store timestamps
| (8-bit number, 0 is 1900), on 2038 (1900 + 128), unless the 8-bit
| number is explicitly made an unsigned number (assumed with other
| ISO 9660 implementations), there will be issues with timestamps.
| [1]
|
| A full bug report, complete with a bugfix is here:
| https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=990468
|
| A fork of cdrtools with this bug fixed is on GitHub:
| https://github.com/samboy/iso9660
|
| Again, prayers for Schilling's family, and he was very
| professional in his interactions with me, even in his final days.
|
| [1] The issue is with how Schilling's CDR tools calculates
| timezones; the time zone becomes an invalid number starting in
| 2028.
| rhabarba wrote:
| > While it has not been brought to court, some lawyers, include
| the Free Software Foundation's legal counsel, feel the CDDL may
| be incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL).
|
| Which is irrelevant as the code does not contain any GPL code,
| right?
| strenholme wrote:
| The cdrtools stuff is GPL because Schilling maintained the
| code after Eric Youngdale [1] stopped working on it.
|
| [1] Youngdale is the Yggdrasil Linux guy, for people using
| Linux long enough to remember that long since abandoned
| distro.
| filomeno wrote:
| I guess there is a typo the second time you wrote "2038".
| strenholme wrote:
| Yep, and of course the edit window is now closed so the typo
| now stays.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Hehe. I'm not sure someone's epitaph is the appropriate place
| to report a bug. On the other hand, after thinking about it, I
| hope someone reports a bug in one of my tools in my obituary
| thread :)
| nefitty wrote:
| It is sort of beautiful in a way. It reminds me of how people
| will look back on a musician's discography when they pass.
| For programmers, maybe looking through their code and the
| unique voice they expressed through it is what we do.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Donald Knuth has a unique solution to the "bugs after death"
| problem. When he dies, TeX goes to version pi, and METAFONT
| to version e. All bugs become features.
| anon9001 wrote:
| > May his software immortalize him.
|
| I wish we had a better word for what strenholme is doing
| besides "maintainer".
|
| To have known the deceased and decide to continue their work
| is something special indeed.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Well it looks like cdrtools is in need of a new maintainer now,
| if the outcome is that you carry on the legacy and let the tool
| live on, that would be great!
| strenholme wrote:
| Yes, indeed, I've been annoyed that there isn't a maintainer
| for the Debian port for a while. I will maintain the code
| based on the final pure-GPL version of the code, to avoid the
| entire licensing issue.
|
| If Eric Youngdale could come out of the woodwork and
| retroactively add a "CDR tools, as a special GPL exception,
| can integrate CDDL licensed code" clause, that might allow us
| to use Schilling's more recent code, but, to be safe, I
| prefer to work with the older codebase to keep the license
| simple.
| toyg wrote:
| _> to be safe_
|
| If the copyright holder is dead, there is nothing to be
| afraid of in violating his license, surely...? At worst you
| could ask his heirs to add that exception.
| snerbles wrote:
| It'll be up to the estate of the rights holder, and they
| are less likely to understand the nuances of open source
| licensing.
| fragmede wrote:
| Yes. In the 'reverts to copyright' view of GPL, the
| estate gets full rights and can proceed however they
| wish. Which, thanks to the Mouse Corporation, is a long
| time.
|
| _> Copyright protection generally lasts for 70 years
| after the death of the author. If the work was a "work
| for hire", then copyright persists for 120 years after
| creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is
| shorter. _
|
| [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_Unite
| d_St...]
| pantalaimon wrote:
| > I will maintain the code based on the final pure-GPL
| version of the code, to avoid the entire licensing issue.
|
| But that's what Debian did already with wodim/cdrkit much
| to Jorg's dismay. I don't think it received much
| development and afaik never got BluRay support.
| strenholme wrote:
| The wodim / cdrkit stuff is what I would maintain --
| there are a lot of bugs for it which have been ignored
| for too long:
|
| https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
| bin/pkgreport.cgi?package=geniso...
| rhabarba wrote:
| I hope that SCCS and bosh will also have new maintainers. I
| use them both.
| chappi42 wrote:
| in
|
| > A fork of cdrtools with this bug fixed is on GitHub:
| https://github.com/samboy/iso9660
|
| I dedicate this repo this his memory. --> I dedicate this repo
| to his memory.
| strenholme wrote:
| Fixed: https://github.com/samboy/img9660/commit/54f144a3367d5
| 59fc22...
| giords wrote:
| RIP Jorg, many probably don't know him, however his work was at
| the basis of k3b, Brasero and many other software programs that
| allowed burning CDs in early 2000s. At least that's what I know
| him for.
|
| Linux expanded and thrived thanks to CD copies and the support of
| CD recorders was often poor. His work surely affected many and he
| did his part in bringing Linux to where it is today.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| I've burned many a disc thanks to his tools, and going way
| back! I never had a coaster that wasn't either defective media
| or my fault.
|
| Thanks, Jorg, for useful tools that have kept on being useful.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| Indeed - the name did ring a bell when I saw it, and then it
| all came back when I saw cdrtools at the top of the list (early
| 2000s in my case as well).
|
| Thanks Jorg.
| rnd0 wrote:
| I didn't know him, but saw him on at least two different
| projects. He contributed a hell of a lot (including the first
| standalone OpenSolaris distro) and seemed like a man of very
| clear and definate tastes and principles.
|
| I'll continue to remember him fondly
| drewg123 wrote:
| Such sad news.
|
| I remember him from cdrtools. It was amazing because I recall
| that it ran _everywhere_ in the late 90s. SunOS, Solaris, DEC
| UNIX, FreeBSD, Linux, etc. That was remarkable for a piece of
| software that interacted with hardware.
| bombcar wrote:
| One of the main reasons I started using Linux was to reliably
| burn CDs, and cdrecord was part of that.
|
| The same hardware on Windows was very hard to dedicate enough
| power to the recording software in the 95/98 era.
| chasil wrote:
| There was also a Windows port of cdrecord that worked. I
| remember using it.
| strenholme wrote:
| Indeed. I still use the Windows port of CDRtools to burn CDs
| in Windows; CDs burned with Microsoft's built in tools can
| have issues (such as, if I'm not careful, burning with a UDF
| filesystem which some CD players will not recognize; also the
| Windows CD burner can have issues burning a CD which is
| sector-by-sector the maximum size a given CD blank can fit)
| which are best fixed by using Schilling's software instead.
| pradn wrote:
| It's wonderful to see his OSS work celebrated. One can only hope
| to be recognized for great work like this at the end of their
| life. I don't do much open-source work, and most corporate
| systems I worked on will probably be obsolete by then. Alas! A
| life comprises many things.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| I know as well as anybody that he was a man with strong opinions
| and a willingness to share them, but he also had a willingness to
| laugh at himself and his work. In the unlikely event that you
| ever made to the bottom of the cdrecord manpage, this is what you
| found: Bugs Cdrecord has even more
| options than ls.
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