Jörg Schilling has died

I recognise his name as something that flitted by on copyright pages, for tools that made my life easier, better, and for free.<p>And sad though his passing is, it marks something else for me - that a person committed to &quot;improving the world a little&quot; is recognised <i>without</i> having made billions in an IPO or become a media celebrity. Maybe we can all aim a little lower (or higher depending on how you see it) now.<p>Thank you Jorg.<p>Our condolences to your loved ones.

First of all, compassion and condolences for Schilling’s family.<p>Second of all, I had a very recent positive interaction with him. I recently was in contact with Mr. Schilling to report a bug in CDR tools. Even though he was (looking back) dying, he was very prompt in replying to me and discussing the bug with me over email. However, even though I gave him a fix, he was unable to apply it, probably because of his poor health.<p>Thirdly, there is a really serious bug in CDR tools: It will start creating bad timestamps in 2028. That’s not a typo: 2028 (<i>not</i> 2038). Because of how ISO 9660 filesystems store timestamps (8-bit number, 0 is 1900), on 2038 (1900 + 128), unless the 8-bit number is explicitly made an unsigned number (assumed with other ISO 9660 implementations), there will be issues with timestamps. [1]<p>A full bug report, complete with a bugfix is here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugs.debian.org&#x2F;cgi-bin&#x2F;bugreport.cgi?bug=990468" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugs.debian.org&#x2F;cgi-bin&#x2F;bugreport.cgi?bug=990468</a><p>A fork of cdrtools with this bug fixed is on GitHub: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;samboy&#x2F;iso9660" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;samboy&#x2F;iso9660</a><p>Again, prayers for Schilling’s family, and he was very professional in his interactions with me, even in his final days.<p>[1] The issue is with how Schilling’s CDR tools calculates timezones; the time zone becomes an invalid number starting in 2028.

I know as well as anybody that he was a man with strong opinions and a willingness to share them, but he also had a willingness to laugh at himself and his work. In the unlikely event that you ever made to the bottom of the cdrecord manpage, this is what you found:<p><pre><code> Bugs Cdrecord has even more options than ls.</code></pre>

RIP Jörg, many probably don&#x27;t know him, however his work was at the basis of k3b, Brasero and many other software programs that allowed burning CDs in early 2000s. At least that&#x27;s what I know him for.<p>Linux expanded and thrived thanks to CD copies and the support of CD recorders was often poor. His work surely affected many and he did his part in bringing Linux to where it is today.

He was my colleague several years ago, sitting just one door from mine (but not working on the same projects) He had an office with lot of hardware stacking up. I tried a few times to talked with him about new promising techs like Nix and Rust, to push him a bit outside of his boundaries. He did not really cared and derailed the conversation and asked if the Nix shell was POSIX compliant (I think it was more or less the situation, time has passed...). I didn&#x27;t follow all the drama with regards to the licensing of his code but it was clear that he had strong opinions and it was not easy to change them.<p>He was super specialized in C and Unix and I had a lot of respect that he used the same tech his whole career.<p>You could not ignore him when he was in a room, he had a strong presence. I always saw him joyful. He used to told me some stupid jokes regularly also.<p>My sincere condolences to everybody that will miss him.

Besides cdrecord, he created several other high quality tools. I especially remember star, a tar with features that made it much better suitable for real-world tape backups than GNU tar. A friend used it to implement a backup system.<p>I think people in the German nerdsphere had an affection for him because he was a fanatical fan of Solaris, which he liked to get into in all kinds of situations, notably in heated comments on heise.de. It was kind of cute to see such an obviously intelligent guy behave like that. Many geeks and nerds have things that they care much more about than would be considered &quot;normal&quot;, after all.

I had a sparc 2000e, running solaris, with a 1tb disk array built of <i>many</i> 23gb, 8lb monster SCSI disks that had already lived a long life in a TV stations video array. Spread over like a dozen SCSI controller channels. <i>slightly</i> flaky.<p>Many of the things I made that machine do were only possible to me because of Shilling&#x27;s shared knowledge. Thanks for that.<p>I shall burn a terminator in salute.

I‘ve had my share of flamewars with Jörg, as had many others. But it was always civilised and never went ad hominem. I will miss him. The few times we met in person, we had some good laughs about many things. Tough, but nice guy. Left too soon.

Oh god, I remember cdrtools. It was such a cool software on the Linux desktop in the 2000s. Converting and Cloning CDs felt simple at Linux where it was notoriously challenging on Windows (I know I know. That&#x27;s just my impression).<p>Unfortunately I don&#x27;t know the other projects of Jörg Schilling.

That&#x27;s very sad. Like many others, I used `cdrecord` and `mkisofs` back in the day.<p>But mainly I remember him for his work on SCCS. That code was AT&amp;T proprietary for a long time, but it was open-sourced as part of OpenSolaris. Schilling made it portable and produced binaries for several platforms, including the Mac. He even gave some conference talks on this topic. By the time he did that work, most projects had already moved onto other version control systems. But there are older, closed-source histories of various projects (such as Java) that are still in SCCS, and I find his tools useful to this day for investigating those histories.<p>Condolences to his family.

Such sad news.<p>I remember him from cdrtools. It was amazing because I recall that it ran <i>everywhere</i> in the late 90s. SunOS, Solaris, DEC UNIX, FreeBSD, Linux, etc. That was remarkable for a piece of software that interacted with hardware.

Very nice guy!<p>I will remember him for his CDDL flames and my invitation for him to answer the CDDL&#x2F;GPL debate over at the brand new SE OSS site right at the launch in 2015, which he gladly accepted.<p>I vaguely recall making this question explicitly for him to answer, seeing that he was already on the site, and me needing a total of 10 QA entries to get an Area51 badge for a follow-through on the launch of the site as a founding member. He didn&#x27;t disappoint and provided a great answer!<p>He was not shy of having a good argument and defending the position he thought was correct even if such position was extremely unpopular and futile to have and to defend:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;4JzAE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;4JzAE</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;opensource.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;2094&#x2F;are-cddl-and-gpl-really-incompatible" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;opensource.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;2094&#x2F;are-cddl...</a><p>Very sad to learn he&#x27;s gone. RIP.

Related:<p><i>Profile: Jörg Schilling (2005)</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28827572" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28827572</a>

I think many can remember the sheer magic of their first cdrecord run (and the terror of producing a coaster). Instantly recognizable name, really sad news.

Damn, I remember working with him to bring cdrutils to solaris back in the day, he was quite no-nonsense but we had quite a lot of fun on irc poking around, star was always faster than gnutar too.<p>Will raise a glass to you tonight, friend.

&quot;May his software immortalise him.&quot;<p>I wish this was true just a bit. Software goes away with the time almost like no other human artifact.

I haven&#x27;t thought about him in ages, or cdrtools, but I benefited heavily from his software once upon a time. The cdrtools flamewars seem positively quaint these days. Clearly a talented developer and his work definitely was a help in open source catching on.

<p><pre><code> We will of course also remember him for his flames. </code></pre> No kidding. I remember pretty well the cdrecord drama back in the day if only from a distance.<p>Very sad to hear this news. RIP.

I think his last posts on Heise.de Forums were from around Sep 18 2021. On heise.de he commented almost daily, on all sorts of topics.

I never interacted with Mr. Schilling, but when I saw the title, I was telling myself: &quot;Jorg Schilling, Jorg Schilling, I know that name for sure&quot; - then I remember: I would see that copyright notice a thousand times waiting on a mkisofs + cdrecord session back when GUI tools weren&#x27;t quite there yet.<p>In Hebrew they say: חבל עד דאבדין ולא משתכחין (well, technically it&#x27;s part Aramaic)<p>Rest In Piece and honor for paving important stretches of the road on which the world of software marches on.

I clearly burned a lot of CD-Rs in my day because I immediately recognised that surname but didn&#x27;t know why. Condolences to his loved ones.

His modest homepage: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdrtools.sourceforge.net&#x2F;private&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdrtools.sourceforge.net&#x2F;private&#x2F;</a>

It&#x27;s wonderful to see his OSS work celebrated. One can only hope to be recognized for great work like this at the end of their life. I don&#x27;t do much open-source work, and most corporate systems I worked on will probably be obsolete by then. Alas! A life comprises many things.

I didn&#x27;t know him, but saw him on at least two different projects. He contributed a hell of a lot (including the first standalone OpenSolaris distro) and seemed like a man of very clear and definate tastes and principles.<p>I&#x27;ll continue to remember him fondly

We had our differences, but in the end he was a great developer. May he Rest In Peace.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.kavin.rocks&#x2F;LaF0rge&#x2F;status&#x2F;1447471874821304330" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.kavin.rocks&#x2F;LaF0rge&#x2F;status&#x2F;144747187482130433...</a>

A true software hero was lost today.<p>My deepest condolences to the family and friends.

RIP schily<p>Uncompromising on software reliability, worthy of respect

We (engineers in Sun&#x2F;Solaris) have couple of opportunities to meet him and discuss with him. He was really unforgettable personality on FOSS scene. Many thanks Joerg for your work and opinions.

I used star as part of my companies backups for many years.<p>I loved his opinionation.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;schilytools.sourceforge.net&#x2F;index.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;schilytools.sourceforge.net&#x2F;index.php</a>

Fuck cancer.<p>We will miss you schilly.<p>Thanks for all your excellent software. May you code in peace with the *nix gods.

Dupe: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28826167" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28826167</a>

RIP Schily

Isn&#x27;t this the sort of death that warrants the HN black bar?