Adrian Hands, Ian Page Hands, Gnome, and Open Source

I saw this go by on Twitter but it is too profound a story to let scroll off my screen so I am going to make sure I remember it in this blog post.

Adrian Hands was a contributor to the Gnome open source Linux Desktop project. Adrian died of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) on February 2, 2011 while in India getting treatment.

His last patch to the Gnome was to add a copy image to clipboard and copy path to clipboard functionality to Gnome. He wrote the patch by typing it in using a morse code device he operated with his legs as he could no longer use a keyboard because of his disease.

Adrian finished the patch and submitted it on January 30, 2011, three days before he died.

His last communication with his son Ian Page Hands was on January 30, 2011 where they exchanged E-mail about how proud they were about the patch.

My words in this blog post are so insufficient to describe this. Please go and read Ian’s note to the Gnome community.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78514#c19

Wow.