On Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 6:29 PM Steve Singer <steve@ssinger.info> wrote:
>
>
> It is with much sadness that I am letting the community know that Chris
> Browne passed away recently.
>
> Chris had been a long time community member and was active on various
> Postgresql mailing lists. He was a member of the funds committee, the PgCon
> program committee and served on the board of the PostgreSQL Community
> Association of Canada. Chris was a maintainer of the Slony
> replication system and worked on various PG related tools.
>
> I worked with Chris for over 10 years and anytime someone had a problem he
> would jump at the chance to help and propose solutions. He
> always had time to listen to your problem and offer ideas or explain how
> something worked.
>
> I will miss Chris
>
Chris is one of the folks whom I got to meet online very early in my
time with the project, who was there in Toronto at the first
developer's conference [1], and was one of the folks I always looked
forward to seeing in Ottawa, even if it was just to quickly catch-up.
I suspect his contributions to the project are understated, but a lot
of time, troubleshooting, and tutoring came from Chris to many others
of us around Slony (back when Slony was the main game in town) and
around plpgsql. Of course, he knew his way around an OS just as well
as he knew Postgres.
I think my fondest memory of Chris was one, many years back, when I
just happened to be in Toronto for non-postgres related business, and
we coordinated to meet up for a quick drink and to catch-up. He was
kind enough to offer me an invitation to a private "computer users"
dinner that he often frequented at a hole-in-the-wall Hungarian place.
I'm always game for a bit of adventure and I'm so glad I was because
ended up being a truly special night, learning much more about Chris
away from the database stuff, with a bunch of great food (still don't
know half of what it was), and the realization that this small group
of friends included several luminaries in the computer science field,
(as one example Henry Spencer, who wrote the "regex" software library
for regular expressions), who I can't imagine ever having the
opportunity to meet otherwise.
Most of us are not nearly as open and as kind as he was, and he will
indeed be missed.
[1] https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/obartunov/24248903/36575/36575_original.jpg,
he is the one in the back, holding up the sign.
Robert Treat
https://xzilla.net
