This morning I learned that Bennett Robinson passed away about a year ago.
I met Bennett on a flight from Singapore to Bangkok, he gave me the push to actually install Linux on my laptop. He was running it himself (a man in his sixties), and convinced me it was easy to make the switch. We kept in touch. There was talk of working together on a few projects, but nothing materialised on that front.
Bennett was a real open source evangelist. His business was built around open source software. He presented it as a genuine business alternative to commercially licensed software. It was inspiring to see a man of such experience so vibrantly engaging with the concept.
I’ll be back in Bangkok in a month, so I dropped Bennett an email. It bounced. I tracked him down online to the American Chamber of Commerce in Thailand. They kindly informed me of his passing. He was skiing in Japan when he suffered a heart attack they said.
Bennett left a wife and young children, my condolences to them. Bennett my friend, rest in peace.
I met Bennett almost 50 years ago in Los Angeles. He came out to LA because he learned education was free with the state schools. We ran the streets for 5 years then I got married. He used my physics laboratory notes for one of the classes. Then one day he came in and told me he was going to Stanford to get hs PhD in physics. When he was talking with Stanford they said it is one of the toughest physics schools in the world. He replied “that’s why I’m here”.
RIP
Thanks for sharing K, a lovely story. I still think of him full of life, it’s hard to really believe that he has passed.