Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

[Amin Bandali]

We have learned with deep sadness that Thien-Thi Nguyen (ttn) died in
October 2022.  Thien-Thi was a hacker, artist, writer, and long-time
maintainer and contributor to many GNU programs as well as other free
software packages.  He was the GNU maintainer of the rcs, guile-sdl,
alive, and superopt packages, and he was working on GNU Go as well.

Thien-Thi especially loved GNU Emacs, GNU Taler, and GNU Go: he was
the author and maintainer of the xpm, gnugo, ascii-art-to-unicode,
and hideshow GNU Emacs packages and made substantial contributions to
many others such as vc, as well as to GNU Taler and its documentation.

We greatly miss Thien-Thi in the free software community - his death
is a great loss to the Free World.

Re: Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

[Emanuel Berg]

Amin Bandali wrote:

> We have learned with deep sadness that Thien-Thi Nguyen
> (ttn) died in October 2022. Thien-Thi was a hacker, artist,
> writer, and long-time maintainer and contributor to many GNU
> programs as well as other free software packages. He was the
> GNU maintainer of the rcs, guile-sdl, alive, and superopt
> packages, and he was working on GNU Go as well.

RIP. He was a very cool hacker and wherever he is now, I'm
sure he still is.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

[lux]

On Sat, 2023-09-09 at 23:55 -0400, Amin Bandali wrote:
> We have learned with deep sadness that Thien-Thi Nguyen (ttn) died in
> October 2022.  Thien-Thi was a hacker, artist, writer, and long-time
> maintainer and contributor to many GNU programs as well as other free
> software packages.  He was the GNU maintainer of the rcs, guile-sdl,
> alive, and superopt packages, and he was working on GNU Go as well.
> 
> Thien-Thi especially loved GNU Emacs, GNU Taler, and GNU Go: he was
> the author and maintainer of the xpm, gnugo, ascii-art-to-unicode,
> and hideshow GNU Emacs packages and made substantial contributions to
> many others such as vc, as well as to GNU Taler and its documentation.
> 
> We greatly miss Thien-Thi in the free software community - his death
> is a great loss to the Free World.
> 
R.I.P

Re: Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

[Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide]

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lux <lx@shellcodes.org> writes:

> On Sat, 2023-09-09 at 23:55 -0400, Amin Bandali wrote:
>> We have learned with deep sadness that Thien-Thi Nguyen (ttn) died in
>> October 2022.  Thien-Thi was a hacker, artist, writer, and long-time
>> maintainer and contributor to many GNU programs as well as other free
>> software packages.  He was the GNU maintainer of the rcs, guile-sdl,
>> alive, and superopt packages, and he was working on GNU Go as well.
>> 
>> Thien-Thi especially loved GNU Emacs, GNU Taler, and GNU Go: he was
>> the author and maintainer of the xpm, gnugo, ascii-art-to-unicode,
>> and hideshow GNU Emacs packages and made substantial contributions to
>> many others such as vc, as well as to GNU Taler and its documentation.
>> 
>> We greatly miss Thien-Thi in the free software community - his death
>> is a great loss to the Free World.
>> 
> R.I.P

The news shocked me and I’ve been stumbling over what to write — and
failing. So I will just second this:

R.I.P

Thank you for making the world a better place.

Best wishes,
Arne
-- 
Unpolitisch sein
heißt politisch sein,
ohne es zu merken.
draketo.de

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Re: Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

[Sébastien Gendre]

A sad news. :(

R.I.P

Amin Bandali <bandali@gnu.org> writes:

> We have learned with deep sadness that Thien-Thi Nguyen (ttn) died in
> October 2022.  Thien-Thi was a hacker, artist, writer, and long-time
> maintainer and contributor to many GNU programs as well as other free
> software packages.  He was the GNU maintainer of the rcs, guile-sdl,
> alive, and superopt packages, and he was working on GNU Go as well.
>
> Thien-Thi especially loved GNU Emacs, GNU Taler, and GNU Go: he was
> the author and maintainer of the xpm, gnugo, ascii-art-to-unicode,
> and hideshow GNU Emacs packages and made substantial contributions to
> many others such as vc, as well as to GNU Taler and its documentation.
>
> We greatly miss Thien-Thi in the free software community - his death
> is a great loss to the Free World.

Re: Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

[Bob Newell]

Indeed sad news, and I am very sorry to hear this.  I wondered
what happened to Gnuvola, and unfortunately now I know.

TTN was not a "he" but a "she" as far as I know.  Certainly
this is attested to by her name.  In Viet Nam the middle name
"Thi" is given to women.  For men it would have been "Van".
Given that last names come first in that country, she would be
called Nguyen Thi Thien.

RIP, TTN.  Your unique humor and many contributions will be
missed.  You couldn't have been very old and your passing is a
loss to us all.

> Amin Bandali <bandali@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> We have learned with deep sadness that Thien-Thi Nguyen (ttn) died in
>> October 2022.  Thien-Thi was a hacker, artist, writer, and long-time
>> maintainer and contributor to many GNU programs as well as other free
>> software packages.  He was the GNU maintainer of the rcs, guile-sdl,
>> alive, and superopt packages, and he was working on GNU Go as well.
>>
>> Thien-Thi especially loved GNU Emacs, GNU Taler, and GNU Go: he was
>> the author and maintainer of the xpm, gnugo, ascii-art-to-unicode,
>> and hideshow GNU Emacs packages and made substantial contributions to
>> many others such as vc, as well as to GNU Taler and its documentation.
>>
>> We greatly miss Thien-Thi in the free software community - his death
>> is a great loss to the Free World.
>
>

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i

- Via GNU/Linux/Emacs/Gnus/BBDB

RE: [External] : Re: Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

[Drew Adams]

> Indeed sad news, and I am very sorry to hear this.  I wondered
> what happened to Gnuvola, and unfortunately now I know.
> 
> TTN was not a "he" but a "she" as far as I know.  Certainly
> this is attested to by her name.  In Viet Nam the middle name
> "Thi" is given to women.  For men it would have been "Van".
> Given that last names come first in that country, she would be
> called Nguyen Thi Thien.
> 
> RIP, TTN.  Your unique humor and many contributions will be
> missed.  You couldn't have been very old and your passing is a
> loss to us all.

(I too blindly presumed she was he.)

A true free spirit. Something fresh each time she wrote.

Re: [External] : Re: Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

[Bob Newell]

I could of course be COMPLETELY wrong about this and apologies if I
am, as I did not know TTN "in person" but only via emails over the
years.  I am only drawing conclusions which might or might not be
incorrect.

On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 5:57 PM Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:
>
> > Indeed sad news, and I am very sorry to hear this.  I wondered
> > what happened to Gnuvola, and unfortunately now I know.
> >
> > TTN was not a "he" but a "she" as far as I know.  Certainly
> > this is attested to by her name.  In Viet Nam the middle name
> > "Thi" is given to women.  For men it would have been "Van".
> > Given that last names come first in that country, she would be
> > called Nguyen Thi Thien.
> >
> > RIP, TTN.  Your unique humor and many contributions will be
> > missed.  You couldn't have been very old and your passing is a
> > loss to us all.
>
> (I too blindly presumed she was he.)
>
> A true free spirit. Something fresh each time she wrote.



-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i

Via Linux/Emacs/Gnus/BBDB.

Re: Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

[tomas]

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On Sat, Sep 09, 2023 at 11:55:05PM -0400, Amin Bandali wrote:
> We have learned with deep sadness that Thien-Thi Nguyen (ttn) died in
> October 2022.

Sad news. TTN was such an incredibly nice person.

You'll be missed.

-- 
t

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Re: [External] : Re: Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

[Amin Bandali]

Hi Bob, all,

Thanks for your replies, and for sharing and helping keep Thien-Thi's
memory alive.

However, Thien-Thi/ttn was in fact a "he": ttn's mastodon profile
bio starts with "Sono un Programmatore" (masculine) - as opposed to
e.g. "una programmatrice" (feminine) - and ttn referred to himself as
a husband and father in his writings.  I'd also seen photos of ttn,
and several other GNU hackers who knew ttn (likely much better than
I did) refer to ttn using the he/him pronouns.

Hope this helps.

-a

Re: [External] : Re: Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

[Bob Newell]

Amin, thank you so much for the clarification.  I was conjecturing
based on what I know about Vietnamese naming conventions.  "Thi" is
very unusual as a male name as I am told (by Vietnamese).

But certainly none of this detracts from TTN's quirky and ever-present
sense of humor and the many, many contributtions.

On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 2:45 PM Amin Bandali <bandali@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Bob, all,
>
> Thanks for your replies, and for sharing and helping keep Thien-Thi's
> memory alive.
>
> However, Thien-Thi/ttn was in fact a "he": ttn's mastodon profile
> bio starts with "Sono un Programmatore" (masculine) - as opposed to
> e.g. "una programmatrice" (feminine) - and ttn referred to himself as
> a husband and father in his writings.  I'd also seen photos of ttn,
> and several other GNU hackers who knew ttn (likely much better than
> I did) refer to ttn using the he/him pronouns.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> -a



-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i

Via Linux/Emacs/Gnus/BBDB.

Re: [External] : Re: Goodbye to Thien-Thi Nguyen

[Amin Bandali]

Bob Newell writes:

> Amin, thank you so much for the clarification.  I was conjecturing
> based on what I know about Vietnamese naming conventions.  "Thi" is
> very unusual as a male name as I am told (by Vietnamese).

Cheers, Bob, and many thanks to you for sharing your knowledge about
Vietnamese naming conventions - it's interesting and valuable to know,
even if not 100% applicable to every single case.

> But certainly none of this detracts from TTN's quirky and ever-present
> sense of humor and the many, many contributtions.

Indeed, most definitely not.