[Opensim-dev] Latif Kalifa

[Diva Canto]

It is with great sadness that I inform you that one of the oldest and 
most respected members of this community, Latif Kalifa, has passed away, 
after a long battle with a serious health condition that landed him in 
the hospital many times over the past few years.

Latif's contributions to the open source SL ecosystem were vast and 
varied. He was one of the original contributors, and the main 
maintainer, of libOMV, a library that embodies the LL protocol and data 
structures. LibOMV lies at the heart of OpenSimulator, as well as many 
SL/OpenSim bots developed by lots of people. Latif also developed 
Radegast, an alternative viewer used by many, especially people with 
disabilities. He also contributed to the Singularity viewer and its 
offshoot, Replex. He participated in the SL Architecture Working Group, 
and in many technical discussions in the OpenSim-dev IRC chat channel. 
He was a vocal advocate of free open source software.

We don't necessarily know who Latif was in real life, what he did for a 
living, or who is family and loved ones are. That's one of the 
consequences of being part of world-wide online communities, where we 
interact only with virtual representations of real people, often using 
pseudonyms. But it was clear to everyone who interacted with him that 
his spirit was strong and that his heart, wherever in the world he 
lived, was in the right place. Open source software exists because of 
people like him.

His code will outlive him.
He will be missed.