

R.I.P Atul Chitnis : The Man Who Changed the Open Source World - Brajeshwar
http://www.nextbigwhat.com/atul-chitnis-297/

======
sriramk
I never expected to find out about the passing of one of my closest friends
via HN.

I'm sure others will find better ways to articulate the below.

Atul was a wonderful human being. Others know him as the face of open source
in India, the man who with his writing, his enthusiasm and his unlimited
passion willed the FOSS community forward in India. There is a reason why
almost anyone who was involved with open source in India knew his name and
probably recalled him fondly.

Me, I know him, as one of my closest friend and mentor. Never missing a chance
to poke fun at my Microsoft past, he was a huge source of inspiration and
friendship to me and my wife.

His last tweet quotes Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" - that is
exactly what he was.

Atul, we'll miss you beyond what mere words can express.

------
shailesh
This is a sad news.

I remember Atul's articles in PC Quest since 1993. He wrote eloquently and
passionately.

His most admirable trait was, fighting for what is right. Like, once he wrote
a good article about why the value of a BBS is amplified by the discussions
that occur over there, and not as a means for file sharing. To quote him from
memory, "Imagine that you wrote a great book and made it available for free so
that people can make good use of it. Now, if people took your book and used it
to wrap _chanas_."

In 1995, PC Quest bundled Slackware Linux with a CD-ROM, a first for any
Indian magazine. This heralded a beginning of a generation of Linux
enthusiasts in India. During those years, we used to look forward to a copy of
PC Quest, in part because of his articles. Otherwise, how would we have known
about CompuServe, pobox.com and many other things? He was absolutely right
during 90s, about the Internet services being toys.

I could perhaps go on writing an essay, but will wrap with just two examples
about his writing style.

On visiting various CompuServe forums, he would say, "...and when I log in to
various forums greeted with '11 messages for you', I feel like my daughter
yelling at me, 'Papa!'"

On the extremely funny and weird userid scheme for dial up Internet accounts
by the only ISP (Govt. owned) in India, "...and when I got an e-mail address,
Gautam sent a mail to me 'Welcome _Qaidi_ no. AAQ392021!" (User names used to
be like AAQ392021 in 1995.). Sidenote: we have come a very long way since then
and things are much better now.

I might as well say that the only other technology writer who impressed me
more than Atul during 90s, was Brian Kernighan.

Although Atul has passed away, he will surely remain alive in the hearts of a
generation of technologists in India.

Goodbye great columnist, and may your soul rest in piece.

मृत्योर्मामृतं गमय् ।

------
dotmanish
Atul ('toolz' on IRC) has been an influence over the tech crowd in India for
years - a lot of people (techies / hackers) were introduced to Linux, and Open
Source in general by his enthusiastic stage-speaks or writings on web /
magazines.

The events Linux/Bangalore and later FOSS.IN used to be the hacker gatherings,
and the conversations were fantastic in these events. Atul celebrated hackers,
and I recall him calling out Gopal V ('t3rminat0r' - twitter/IRC) on stage who
had ported dotGNU Portable .NET to Encore Simputer during LB/2004.

Atul also propelled the concept of small-distributed Linux enthusiast meetings
(BoFs) across Bangalore city (this was in 2004/2005), which essentially meant
that techies found niche groups to meet up and interact (mostly over
tea/coffee, less on beers), instead of waiting for big conferences to happen.
He ran a BBS earlier in the 90s, and knew how to get people to interact IRL
when BBSes went dead in 2000s.

Atul has been a person who celebrated Technology, and influenced a lot of
other people to see the view. Rest in Peace, toolz.

~~~
gopalv
I walked up to him back-stage and said "Now, you owe me a coffee".

He still owes me that coffee :)

R.I.P toolz.

------
jacquesm
Does anybody know what changes Atul Chitnis has caused in the open source
world?

Edit: the man has a wikipedia page, for the curious:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atul_Chitnis>

~~~
sandGorgon
For a large number of Indians who are using Linux today, that first encounter
was through PCQuest magazine - which bundled every flavor of linux it could
find in a DVD (along with a bunch of free software) and gave it away with the
magazine.

A lot of people I know started using OpenOffice after they first encountered
it on PCQuest.

He also founded and ran some of the biggest FOSS groups in India.

RIP.

~~~
ajju
Actually it was a CD not a DVD, at least for a few years!

~~~
nikhilji
Yes, it was a Slackware CD that came with every copy of the PCQuest mag back
in the 1995-1996 time frame. My first taste of Linux and more importantly, it
satiated a thirst for hacking and knowledge. I still look back and recall
fondly all the neat things I learned hacking Slackware. R.I.P. Atul.

------
ajju
Bombay, 1999 - my first ever Internet connection was a VSNL shell account that
could barely load Yahoo.com on Windows 98.

PCQuest, the (paper) magazine which Atul edited, bundled a CD with a new
distro of Linux (or KDE or GNOME) with each month's magazine and became my
introduction to the world of Linux, and soon there after to programming for
fun.

Sad to learn that he is no more.

~~~
primelens
PCQuest ensured that even though general net connectivity and speed in India
lagged behind for a while (due to government restrictions and then for a long
time because the state-monopoly ISP, VSNL, priced their substandard service
exhorbitantly), the Linux revolution reached India almost as it happened.
Without those monthly CDs Linux would have been impossible for many of us to
download with slow modems and a Lynx browser. The first ever CD they included
contained OS/2 warp, though - this was '94-ish.

~~~
kamaal
I feel like a kid when I hear these stories. As an Indian, and not having any
exposure(nor the means to afford to get some exposure) to computers.

My first date with a computer was in school around 1999. Our school principal
had bought a Desktop which could only run DOS. No one in the school knew what
a computer even was. A kid ran back to his home to bring the game 'Lion King'
from his home on a Floppy disk. He successfully booted the PC and ran the game
on it. It was the most fascinating moment of my whole life to stand in a room
full of 200 kids to watch the black magic happen.

I have very interesting stories coming back from those days. I've done some
ingenious and some super stupid things out of curiosity.

~~~
primelens
A decade earlier but it was almost the same situation for us. The school
computers we PC/XT and they were teaching us Logo and GW-BASIC. When someone's
home 286 PC could run _Prince of Persia_ it was a jaw dropping experience. And
the QuickBasic IDE seemed heavensent. Oh how I miss my pirated copy of Turbo C
:-)

------
shrikant
Atul was one of my biggest gateways into Linux and FOSS in general. I'd
venture that he was face of FOSS evangelism in India. Most of what he wrote
was firmly opinionated and highly informative. He was also a massively
interesting person to talk to, and I came away quite frankly awestruck by the
man when our paths crossed occasionally during FOSS.IN 2009.

I am devastated by this news. RIP.

------
vain
This comes as a shock for me, he was young. I had no idea Atul had been
battling cancer for an year.

Here are the ways Atul touched my life:

    
    
      In the days before the Internet was accessible in India, he ran a dial up BBS, and it was a small group of users who were members of all BBSes. It was interesting to read up opinions of informed people. Topics ranged from computing to women's rights.
    
      He would write interesting articles for PCQuest, a valuable resource before the internet made print magazines obsolete
    
      He ran a Linux user group
    
      A few years ago I rediscovered him on the internet. He was passionately exposing the scam MBA provider, Arindam Chaudhuri. This is commendable on its own, as a lot of ill informed people to this day pay large sums of money to Arindam to get a business degree worth nothing.

------
Brajeshwar
His tweet from yesterday -
<https://twitter.com/AtulChitnis/status/341002009794715648>

------
hideo
I was fortunate enough to attend a talk of his organized by the LUG at my alma
mater. He was a passionate and engaging speaker with an amazing presentation
style. That one talk did more to spread FOSS popularity at my college than a
lot of our past efforts combined. All said and done I left enlightened.

------
kaushiks
Much before I knew him from his FOSS work, I used to follow his column on a
computer magazine called Computers@Home. Sad to learn he is no more.

------
avggeek
I hold Atul and Kiran Jonnalagada as the key reasons why I eventually gave up
on my Accountancy degree and took the plunge into learning about programming &
technology. Reading their articles in PCQuest and CHIP about the "magic" of
technology, about the joys (and challenges) of working with FOSS/Linux and
other such topics was something so alien to the grinding frustration of being
a Chartered Accountant that eventually I just had to find out for myself
whether it was all true. I'm now completing a decade working in Technology and
I honestly cannot see myself doing anything else. I was lucky enough to meet
Kiran a few years back and thank him (maybe not strongly enough) for helping
me find my calling. I had hoped to eventually meet Atul and thank him as well
- that I will never get the chance to so I will regret for the rest of my
life. R.I.P Atul - "I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the
hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing
that I do, than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest that I go to
than I have ever known." ('A Tale of Two Cities')

------
jbgreer
I first traveled to India on business in the mid-90s. I had organized a Linux
user group in my city and thought it might be fun to meet like-minded
individuals in Bangalore on my first trip there. I reached out and contacted a
local organizer who would turn out to be Atul Chitnis. He was a gracious and
gregarious host. He organized a gathering during my visit; we met at his
business (Exocore) and the traveled to a local pub where I spent the rest of
the evening talking with him and many others about the impact of open source
on their lives, their livelihood, and the world. We only left when they
finally kicked us out of the pub after closing time. It is one of my favorite
moments of that first trip.

Afterwords we remained periodically in touch, though I never saw him face-to-
face again. I would usually write after hearing of his involvement in some new
conference or having seen mention of him in some publication.

I am sorry to hear of his passing. He will be missed.

------
ssninja
Here is another obituary to the legendary hero by the co-founder of HasGeek
and one who knew Atul Chitnis for a very long time
<http://www.nextbigwhat.com/atul-chitnis-obituary-297/>

------
dilpu123
RIP Atul, you will be remembered for ever. Thanks for everything.

------
mukundmr
This was unexpected. I met Atul at FOSS 2012 in Bangalore. That was fun event.
Atul seemed drained at the time; I didn't know it was cancer doing it. He will
be missed.

------
jbrooksuk
I'm not sure if it's just me, but the first sentence;

> NextBigWhat records with sadness the demise of Atul Chitnis, a passionate
> technologist who spent much of his lifetime popularizing free and open
> source software.

To me sounds awful. Demise always sounds like what you expect some evil genius
to say in a film or something.

Anyway, RIP Atul. The Open Source community owes you a great deal.

------
tuxguy
RIP Atul. I was hoping your spirit & enthusiasm will help you win the battle
over cancer.

Thanks for your pioneering efforts to promote open source in India.

You were far too young to suffer such a tragic death. My thoughts are with
your family & loved ones.

------
general_failure
<http://atulchitnis.net/2013/meet-my-new-companion/#more-3909>

He was so optimistic well into his treatment! You have shown great courage,
sir.

~~~
general_failure
<http://atulchitnis.net/2013/jyoti-and-kishore/> says he used to smoke like a
chimney :(. Maybe that was his downfall.

------
Nano2rad
He liked all technologies but he had special love for open source. he
organized FOSS.IN which is best conference on open source in India when
Bangalore is starved of open source events with his faithful friends

------
throwit1979
Obligatory "fuck cancer" post goes here.

I'm sure this is just some manner of selection or confirmation bias, but it
_seems_ cancer takes more technology luminaries than pretty much anything
else.

------
shiven
My heartfelt condolences to the Atul's family, friends and the team at PCQ.

Atul Chitnis, thank you for your writing and introducing me and many others in
India to FOSS.

Peace and Goodwill.

------
avinash
RIP Atul Chitnis. Met him during a conference in Mauritius around 2002 and we
had a great conversation about open source software in poor(er) countries.

------
manku_timma
RIP Atul. Like many others, PCQuest with the bundled CD's was a special joy
every month.

------
arjn
I learned much from PCQuest during its early years. Thank you Atul Chitnis.

------
mataal
RIP Atul Chitnis. And thanks for all the foss!

