Kevin's musings

As many folks may know, Seth Vidal was taken from us this last Monday Night.

He will be dearly missed by many. He was part of many families: Fedora, Red Hat, Open Source community, Biking enthusiasts and many many more. I knew him for many years in the Fedora Community, then when I joined Red Hat and started working with him every day I knew him even better.

Why did I title this an “Incomplete” rememberance?

Two reasons: First of all, it’s impossible to convey in something as trivial as a blog post what he meant to all those he touched.

He was always ready to be a sounding board for ideas, and more often than not he would get you to rethink some idea in a much more elegant way or get it to lead to a much bigger and impressive idea.

He was always looking out for his friends. Either to ask you if all was ok, or commiserate about some problem that was happening.

He was a master of open source tools. If you asked some random question on IRC, he would often say “just a second” and come back with a script that did exactly what you wanted. He didn’t do this just for people he knew, but anyone with problems to be solved.

He was patient with anyone who wanted to learn.

He had a terrific sense of work/life balance that I often wished I had. He would always be there if servers crashed or some urgent issue came up, but was quick to push less urgent issues off to ride his bike or walk his dog or spend time with his partner.

He had a way of gathering people at Fudcons or the like. After sessions were over you could always find a circle of people around him laughing and talking.

He always somehow remembered little things about everyone he knew. What you liked, something interesting in your area of interest he came across.

And so much more. 

The second reason I call this an Incomplete remembrance is that while Seth is gone, he’s not really GONE. He lives on in all the people he touched, all the communities he strengthened and all the code he wrote for the world to enjoy. So, the next time you ‘yum update’ your Fedora or RHEL machine, or use coprs, or use the ansible yum module, or anything he touched, remember him. The next time someone tells you their crazy idea, ask yourself “What would Seth say?” and help them make their idea more grand and awesome than they could ever have possibly imagined.

You will be missed, but never forgotten.