
Ezra Zygmuntowicz has died - milesf
Ezra Zygmuntowicz, a founder of the rails hosting company Engine Yard and original developer of the web framework Merb, passed away Wednesday, November 26th. No details yet, but what was a rumor on twitter has been confirmed by Stuffstr.com&#x27;s VP Steve Gutmann, the last company Ezra work at as their CTO.<p>Will update as more information is known.
======
jxf
One time I was working on doing some tricky distributed routing for a
freelance customer that was using Merb. At the time I didn't know Ezra and
we'd never personally met, but I explained my problem over email and asked if
he had any suggestions. I wasn't really expecting a reply -- it was
essentially a cold call.

He immediately dropped what he was doing and emailed me back, "that sounds
like a really interesting problem -- can I call you and we'll set up a
screenshare?" He then spent two hours helping me get it right, free of charge,
and he never asked for anything. (I eventually had to email a few of his
colleagues to figure out his office address to send him a thank-you present.)

I think that is the sort of thing that epitomized Ezra, from everything I've
heard from his many other friends: he was funny, patient, and most of all
kind.

~~~
jim-greer
That sounds just like the guy I met at RailsConf in 2006. We were starting
Kongregate and I saw Ezra's talk on Rails Deployment. It was amazing and after
talking to him I decided to try to use Engineyard for Kongregate hosting. We
were one of their first five customers and unfortunately the distributed
filesystem didn't work well for us. We switched off to our own colo but Ezra
helped us at every step of the way, long after it was clear we weren't coming
back.

Such a loss.

Link describing the talk:

[http://martyhaught.com/articles/2006/06/25/railsconf-2006---...](http://martyhaught.com/articles/2006/06/25/railsconf-2006
---day-two/)

------
eliziggy
This is Ezra's brother, Eli Zygmuntowicz. Thank you all for you kind comments.
I know he valued his programming and tech community immensely. He will be
sorely missed by his family, friends and son. If any of you are interested, we
are having a memorial service for him in Portland this Wednesday, Dec 3. We
are also setting up a memorial trust fund for his son, Ryland. Please email me
at eliziggy@hotmail.com if you would like details about either the service or
fund. Best. Eli

~~~
evanphx
Thanks so much for the info Eli. For those that want to attend the service, do
you have a time and location available? Or should they contact you to get
that? I'd like to pass it along to people who have asked on twitter.

~~~
eliziggy
Yes it is ok to share with friends on twitter. The service is for family and
close friends of Ezra's.

Service & Burial - 1:30 pm, Weds. Dec. 3 River View Cemetery - Adams Chapel
0300 SW Taylors Ferry Rd Portland, OR 97219 503-246-4251

We will be setting up and sharing info about a trust fund being set up for his
surviving son Ryland soon as well as central place for people to share their
comments Ezra.

Thanks for all of your kind words and support

------
antirez
Ezra was the first to start making Redis popular, wrote the initial
implementation of the Ruby client, gave the first talk I remember at lightning
conf. One time I met him at EY office with his family, with the 2 months old
child. At some point he started to disappear more and more, we were supposed
to meet in Portland at a Redis conf and he was not able to make it. I was
concerned about him every time I saw a rare tweet. I'm sorry Ezra.

------
hcatlin
When I was first releasing Haml, I remember that Ezra piped up and encouraged
me. Actually, thanks to the Internets, it's still there
[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rubyonrails-
talk/UqYlo_N59zo...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rubyonrails-
talk/UqYlo_N59zo/MzZpxDhHbakJ)

Seeing someone as brilliant as Ezra saying he liked my project (Haml was the
first thing I ever released) really encouraged me to continue on in OSS
development. And, of course, we added iterators to Haml shortly after Ezra
suggested it.

Also, Ezra was super helpful when we built m.wikipedia.org using Merb...
helping me get everything set up so that we could scale that project to 2
billion pages a month through the three dinky machines I had!

I'm totally surprised and gutted to hear that he's passed. :(

------
mreider
He used to fly little radio controlled helicopters all over our office at
Engine Yard. Playful and fun. The real tragedy has little to do with his
departure from the world of technology. The real tragedy is that his son, who
must be no older than six, has lost his father. So so sad.

------
eliziggy
Hello everyone. Here is the link to my Brother Ezra's son Ryland's Memorial
fund. If I know one thing at this time it was that my brother loved and wanted
to provide for his son. Please help us do that any way you can. Please share
via Twitter or any media or with friends who want to help out. Thanks for all
the support.

[http://igg.me/at/ezrazyg/x/2405939](http://igg.me/at/ezrazyg/x/2405939)

Best, Eli Zygmuntowicz

------
holoway
Ezra was so good to me. He helped write Chef, tool our idea and ran with it as
a critical part of Engine Yard cloud. We wrote chef solo together . He and his
wife made my wife and I feel warm and welcomed in San Francisco. Rest well,
big guy.

------
milesf
If you didn't know Ezra, some of his talks are available on Confreaks:

[http://www.confreaks.com/presenters/59-ezra-
zygmuntowicz](http://www.confreaks.com/presenters/59-ezra-zygmuntowicz)

In particular, his last talk at RailsConf 2012 is a fascinating history of
Ruby on Rails:

[http://www.confreaks.com/videos/911-railsconf2012-what-a-
lon...](http://www.confreaks.com/videos/911-railsconf2012-what-a-long-strange-
trip-it-has-been)

------
Adam_Simms
He moved to Portland, Oregon for a new job, but I believe mostly to jump back
into the glass blowing scene he helped create in the 90's. Ezra was a
innovator in the glass pipe world. A world class artist that reinvented
lampworking.

------
mattetti
The way I will always remember Ezra:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/adelcambre/2932034431/in/photo...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/adelcambre/2932034431/in/photolist-5ubuft-5t6rFM-5t6ru6-5taRmY)
(MerbCamp, 2008)

~~~
lholden
Those photos bring back a lot of good memories. I believe MerbCamp was the
first time I had met Ezra in person. Really enjoyed hanging with him and the
other members of the Merb team. Ezra has impacted my life in a very good way
and will be missed.

------
asenchi
Ezra hired me at Engine Yard about two months before he left. I loved
discussing infrastructure and software with him. He did a lot for the Ruby
community and brought to light lots of great tech (redis and nginx). He had a
big impact on my career and for that I will be forever grateful. Prayers and
thoughts with this family. Rest in peace Ezra.

------
heimidal
I shared a cab ride with Ezra from the New Orleans airport to the RubyConf
hotel in 2010. In the very short time we spent in the car talking about his
new role at VMware working on Cloud Foundry, his enthusiasm and passion for
Ruby and the community's future left a huge impression on me.

Ezra, you will be missed.

------
macournoyer
When I was getting started with Thin (the Ruby web server), Ezra sent the
first few patches, talked about it at confs, used it at his company and helped
me debug it on IRC for hours. Only because, he thought it was cool tech. His
passion was contagious.

He's the reason why my tiny project became popular and I'm sure many other
tech we use today. Thank you Ezra!

------
mikepence
What do you say about a man who embodied everything that is good and precious
about the culture of sharing in software? When we all got that Rails was the
next big thing in '05 and '06, Ezra was there in IRC and freely gave of his
time and expertise and all but tutored me in Rails and Ruby. I was so deeply
moved by his generosity, that on meeting him at the first Rails conference, I
just had to hug him.

Goodbye, friend. The kindness you showed to me and to so many others lives on.
Thank you.

~~~
Sthorpe
Right there with you. I can't count the number of times he helped me on IRC.

------
tomfakes
If you were building Rails apps in 2005/6, more than likely you were reading
Ezra's blog post on how deploy to your VPS. It was tricky to get right, but
Ezra made it so that it was no longer impossible. He was always there to help
people with their own tricky configurations too.

------
brumir
I meet Ezra at RailsConf 2007, this was pre Engine yard if I am not mistaken.
At this point he was all merb. He was fun to be around, very positive attitude
and extremely smart.

Sad day…

~~~
tmornini_ey
Ezra agreed to co-found Engine Yard in January 2006, and was full-time in
August or September I believe.

Merb was built to handle a high-traffic endpoint for one of our customers. :-)

~~~
milesf
So Merb's genesis was in response to a customer's need? I remember Rails,
Ruby, and the hosting stack being mighty slow back in the early days.

~~~
piyushpr134
Merb started as essentially a wrapper on top of mongrel handler. Merb =
Mongrel + erb. Mongrel had concurrency and it was super lightweight. However,
it did not have goodies like routing or templating engine. Ezra write Merb as
modular framework which did not care if you used datamapper or active record.
Haml or ERB.

------
tmornini_ey
I woke up this morning to Regan's post on that old photo.

It's an incredibly sad day: a great hacker, founder, and community member has
been lost forever.

Goodbye Exra, I'll miss you.

------
jasonwatkinspdx
In the early days of both Engine Yard and Kongregate Ezra and I worked closely
on solving some problems during high pressure moments. He was smart,
dedicated, and genuine. He worked hard to not just solve problems, but to
communicate and teach everyone around him.

We lost touch over the years, chatting occasionally and always saying "hey, we
should meet up sometime." I'm sorry now we didn't.

------
rabble
Ezra was a playful hacker who was never afraid to strike out and build
something crazy.

------
bphogan
He taught me how to deploy Rails apps, and with his help I figured out what I
needed to get a production environment running on Windows. Then he asked me to
contribute what I know to [https://pragprog.com/book/fr_deploy/deploying-
rails-applicat...](https://pragprog.com/book/fr_deploy/deploying-rails-
applications) (out of print now).

He's one of three people responsible for turning my career completely around
back in 2005. He always paid it forward, and I have always done that myself
since.

He was amazing. Honestly, we need more of that and less "you're doing it
wrong."

------
milesf
I met Ezra back at RailsConf (2007) after a talk he gave. Scary smart, yet
friendly and humble. The man left us way too soon.

------
excsm
I too would like to echo the sentiments that already have been expressed here.
I remember discovering nginx through his blog post about how to easily set up
rails with it. I had issues with backgroundrb and he was so kind to help me
out over irc and countless other moments. I also remember him bringing Redis
to my attention I think he did so for a large number of us. I followed his
work as I had a deep respect and admiration for him as a person. So tragic to
hear this news. Really gutted. I will never forget him.

Never had a chance to meet him in person so Thank you Ezra.

------
acangiano
This was horrible news to wake up to last night. The importance of Ezra in the
Rails and related communities cannot be overstated. He was a great guy with a
big heart; always busy making things whether in the programming world, with
glass, or 3D printers. A true hacker. I wasn't lucky enough to call him a
friend, more of a professional connection/acquaintance, but I'm glad I reached
out to him during his darkest moment and got to know him a little better in
the process. He will be missed.

------
GMFlash
It looks like Ezra has been battling an illness for over a year:
[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/trinitylabs-
talk/f8XOageAwcY...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/trinitylabs-
talk/f8XOageAwcY/3vJE5pEKApQJ)

I'm very sad to hear such bad news about a great person. :( I learned a lot
about developing by hanging out in #merb and #engineyard chatting with Ezra
and the crew.

~~~
grover_hartmann
Do you know what illness that was?

~~~
fuligo
His colleagues and family went to considerable lengths keeping it out of the
spotlight - so we can assume he didn't want people to know. That means it's
probably an illness with a significant stigma, likely something with a strong
mental component.

While personally I think it's a missed opportunity to raise awareness of a
potentially fatal disease, and a missed chance for the people who admired him
to make a final human connection (cause of death is generally considered a
necessary element of reaching closure), it's their prerogative to keep it a
secret. And if he wanted people to know, he'd probably have addressed the
issue.

~~~
grover_hartmann
Was it diabetes?

"I'm also not jumping back in too quickly as the stress had agravated my
recently diagnosed type 2 adult onset diabetes which is what landed me in the
hospital." \-- Ezra Zygmuntowicz

"@inetdavid type2 adult onset. too much hacking for 18 hours a day drinking
red bull and eating fast food. lost 118lbs after diagnosed!" \-- Ezra
Zygmuntowicz

[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/trinitylabs-
talk/f8XOageAwcY...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/trinitylabs-
talk/f8XOageAwcY/ez7jv_qTfcoJ)

[https://twitter.com/ezmobius/status/362228490176692224](https://twitter.com/ezmobius/status/362228490176692224)

How can type 2 diabetes kill a person after only 1 year of being diagnosed?
What the hell? :-(

~~~
bmm6o
There can certainly be complications, but diabetes is usually considered
manageable with an otherwise healthy patient. There's really no point in
speculating without more information, so I'd drop it unless/until more is made
public.

------
throwa
Ezra Zygmuntowicz Memorial Fund for His Son Ryland(indiegogo.com)
[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ezra-zygmuntowicz-
memoria...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ezra-zygmuntowicz-memorial-
fund-for-his-son-ryland)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8690794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8690794)

------
inetdavid
I'm very sad to hear this.

In the very early days of Rails Ezra was one of the most helpful people on the
IRC channel. When he mentioned that he worked only a few hundred miles away I
helped hire him at a small software outfit in Spokane, WA and worked closely
with him for over a year.

From there he left to co-found EngineYard.

He did so much for the Ruby community and will sorely missed.

I'm glad I had a chance to know him.

------
sebie
He left us to early. It is very, very sad. RIP you will be missed :/

------
joshowens
Wow, this make me really sad. I remember interviewing him about Engine Yard on
my old podcast.

He always impressed me and I was so happy he took the time to talk:
[http://web20show.com/2008/07/episode-47-ezra-
zygmuntowicz/](http://web20show.com/2008/07/episode-47-ezra-zygmuntowicz/).

------
nathan7
I'll miss Ezra and his outgoing spirit. Goodbye, old friend.

------
mk00
Ezra was a pioneer in the glass-blowing/pipe industry. Here is some of his
work:
[https://www.facebook.com/jason.lee.16568548/posts/1020460894...](https://www.facebook.com/jason.lee.16568548/posts/10204608940297763?pnref=story)

------
derekcollison
I am deeply saddened by this news. I remember trying to convince Ezra to join
us to help out with CloudFoundry. I, like others, knew Ezra through the Ruby
community where he was a larger than life presence. My thoughts are with his
son, his family and friends.

------
hassox
Ezra was an inspiration to me. My first ever OS contribution was to merb, and
his was so helpful, it inspired me to keep going. It was great to work with
him on that project, and later at Engineyard. So sorry to hear of his passing.

------
davidw
Wow... Very sad news. His twitter page shows him living in Eugene, Oregon, my
hometown. I wonder what he was doing there.

~~~
ogfarmer
He was getting in touch with his glass blowing roots. He had a studio that he
opened down there last march or April.

------
AxisOfEval
The Ruby and Rails community has lost one of its kindest souls. Ezra has left
behind a legacy everyone must aspire to.

------
peppyheppy
Ezra was a nice guy. Very approachable and even though he was probably smarter
than most he talked to he never came across superior.

He is also the one who introduced me to nginx and I think he was instrumental
in making nginx a western webserver that is now used all over the place.

------
tiegz
Condolences to Ezra's family. He'll be missed my many lucky people whom he
influenced.

------
piyushpr134
:(( What happened ?

~~~
milesf
All just speculation right now, but apparently there will be a service on
Wednesday December 3rd in Portland, Oregon.

------
_pius
This is terribly sad. Profound loss for the Ruby community, among many others.

------
eternalban
Ezra is an upstanding human, a generous and helpful spirit. He will be missed.

------
RickHull
Oh wow. So sad to hear about a pillar and pioneer in the Ruby community.

------
dfischer
With my brief encounter of him, he was one of the nicest guys I've ever run
across. He took everyone seriously despite the level of customer. He always
helped like jx5 was saying. Damn.

------
imbriaco
Rest in peace, Ezra.

------
nexneo
RIP Ezra!

Thank you very much for your contributions and Merb.

------
JBFromOZ
shit man! that sucks, you will be missed :-{

------
Joanne_jiang
He left us too early. So sad to hear it.

------
mrkris
:(

------
grover_hartmann
Sorry to ask, I know it's a very personal thing, but was he ill? :(

RIP Ezra.

------
grover_hartmann
Such a big loss. May you rest in peace.

What was the cause of death?

~~~
peteforde
Seriously: it's really uncool that you keep asking this.

I'm sad that you're sad, but you're not taking the hint.

