Dean Allen, R.I.P.(om.co)
om.co
Dean Allen, R.I.P.
https://om.co/2018/01/18/dean-allen-rest-in-peace/
6 comments
The Joyent/TextDrive situation was more difficult than most people dream of. [I worked at Joyent from early 2010 till 2014 or so... post merger, and on into several attempted revivals of TextDrive...]
Dean was much loved by his fans and seen as intractable and 'difficult' by others.
Still - one deserves to rest in peace and not be spoken ill of. Good bye, Dean, and thanks for what you did, and what the space you helped build, has done for several internet communities (textile, textpattern, early Rails, early javascript-on-the-server...) that will yet live on.
Dean was much loved by his fans and seen as intractable and 'difficult' by others.
Still - one deserves to rest in peace and not be spoken ill of. Good bye, Dean, and thanks for what you did, and what the space you helped build, has done for several internet communities (textile, textpattern, early Rails, early javascript-on-the-server...) that will yet live on.
dean allen never got the respect or the credit he deserved.
where most people are trying to "monetize" the web, his focus was on making it more "humane". it's still not too late to see that he was right.
where most people are trying to "monetize" the web, his focus was on making it more "humane". it's still not too late to see that he was right.
Textpattern user here.
The upcoming Textpattern 4.7.0 will be released in memory of Dean Allen.
Cheers, Dean.
https://github.com/textpattern/textpattern/commit/7d41b1ada4...
The upcoming Textpattern 4.7.0 will be released in memory of Dean Allen.
Cheers, Dean.
https://github.com/textpattern/textpattern/commit/7d41b1ada4...
John Gruber wrote a tribute to Allen as well:
https://daringfireball.net/2018/01/dean_allen
https://daringfireball.net/2018/01/dean_allen
Bummer. I was a fan. Just went back to look at my welcome email for TextDrive from May 31, 2005.
He created Textile, a Markdown-like "lightweight markup" language that actually predates Markdown (and is, by some measures, more powerful). He went on to create Textpattern, a blogging system that, like WordPress, bloomed into a lightweight CMS -- but unlike WordPress, TXP (as its fans call it) has a much better template and extension system. And, Allen created TextDrive, an early shared hosting service that, at least until its unfortunate-in-retrospect merger with Joyent, was a power user dream. (No offense to the folks at Joyent -- well, not much -- but TextDrive became their transparently unloved "low end" brand surprisingly quickly.)