[Opensim-users] Latif Kalifa

[Dr Ramesh Ramloll]

I only came across his name on various forums, and his pseudonym certainly
sounded very familiar.  I was not aware of his various and deeply
significant contributions across diverse domains until now. Thanks for
sharing this information which is certainly very inspiring. I just can't
imagine how he was able to contribute the way he did while transcending his
health limitations.

On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 4:11 PM, Dahlia Trimble <dahliatrimble at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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>
>
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-- 
'Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin.'
*Rameshsharma Ramloll* PhD, CEO CTO DeepSemaphore LLC, Affiliate *Research
Associate Professor*, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209 Tel:
208-240-0040
LinkedIn <http://www.linkedin.com/in/rameshramloll>, DeepSemaphore LLC
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