[scribus] R.I.P. mrdocs (1963--2019)

["Christoph Schäfer"]

The Scribus Team is deeply saddened to announce the loss of our friend and colleague Peter Linnell who in the end lost his long battle against cancer.


It is no understatement to say that without Peter Scribus wouldn't be what it is today. It was Peter who spotted the potential of Franz Schmid's initially humble Python program and, as a pre-press consultant at the time, contacted Franz to make him aware of the necessities of PostScript and PDF support, among other things. Peter also wrote the first version of the Scribus online documentation, which resulted in his nickname "mrdocs" in IRC and elsewhere. Until recently, and despite his detoriating health, Peter continued to be involved in building and releasing new Scribus versions.


Scribus was the project he helped to set on track and which marked the beginning of his journey into the world of Free Software development. While it remained at the heart of his commitments to Open Source in general and Libre Graphics software in particular, Peter contributed to Free Software in many other ways as well. For example via contributions to projects related to freedesktop.org, as a package builder of many Free programs for several Linux distributions on the openSUSE Build Service, and later as an openSUSE board member. Peter was also crucial in bringing the Libre Graphics community together by way of sharing his expertise with other graphics-oriented projects and his assistance in organzing the first Libre Graphics Meetings. In the sometimes ego-driven and often emotional world of Open Source development, Peter managed to get along very well with almost everybody and never lost his sense of humour.


We will remember Peter "mrdocs" Linnell for what he was: an optimist, an incredible team player, an honest man and, above all, a friend.


Our thoughts are with his family.


March 2019,
The Scribus Team