Together with the next version of the Eye of GNOME,
the oldest open bug to date (coming from 2002) will be
finally fixed. This bug, about adding a copy
action to the Edit menu, somehow got unattended and
slipped between all the other features that we and the
previous maintainers of eog have been working on
during the last 9 years.
This, until the last days of 2010. Then, out of the blue,
we received in bugzilla a patch coming from Adrian
Hands, implementing this feature. Felix had a look at
it, the usual way, and seeing that it was almost there
he pushed it to the master branch and resolved
the bug fixed. We were happy to see this long
requested feature finally added, but the full story
would not unveil itself until a few weeks ago, when
Ian Hands, son of Adrian, dropped by in bugzilla to
let us know that his father had passed away. He had
ALS and one of the last things he did, by means of a
Morse-code mouse and when he was almost unable to
control the computer anymore, was to write the
aforementioned patch and to attach it in bugzilla.
And about two months later, he would pass away.
If you want, you
can read Ian's message, which is very touching to
say the least. I talked to him privately and he was
open to share this story with the GNOME community, for
which I am grateful, so here you have it. I believe
that there are many things to learn out of this, not
only for each one of us at a personal level, but also
at the community level. In the rush of the industry
we've chosen to work on, sometimes we forget that
there are people behind the patches, emails, and lines
of chat that we exchange every day, and that behind
each one of us there are different stories,
motivations, and feelings that make us to actually be
here, right now, doing
this. How can we, as a community, make sure
that we don't forget that the main reason why we're
here in the end is to deliver something for people?
That we are here because of people? I don't have the
answer but, for certain, knowing what Adrian did for
eog brings me back to earth from my bubble, at least
for a while, and makes me feel proud to be part of a
world where, if we don't forget about it,
people like Adrian, you, or me, can make a
difference.
Thank you, Adrian, for this wonderful gift.
