[Opensim-users] Latif Kalifa

[Dahlia Trimble]

I met Latif in SL thru the Advanced Scripters group. We were both
experimenting with libSecondlife bots at the time and began our long streak
of collaborating. He eventually joined the libopenmetaverse team as a
contributor and I joined the OpenSimulator core team. We both participated
in the OGP and VWRAP efforts by LL and our friendship continued to develop.
He consulted with me on several of my OpenSimulator contributions, notably
mesh asset decoding (for collision shapes for mesh), the protocol for
advanced materials, and, along with several TPV developers, enhanced
particle systems. He had many other contributions besides these, too
numerous to mention. He also was quite principled and would seldom hesitate
to challenge me when we disagreed. This was often difficult to initially
deal with but there often was much validity in his perspective which I
hadn't considered, and our friendship grew stronger. I miss him dearly :(

My condolences and best wishes for those he cherished.

On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 7:00 AM, Diva Canto <diva at metaverseink.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
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