James Jessiman Memorial Award for 2014 awarded to Sergio Reano

[Willy Tschager]

The LDraw.org Steering Committee wished the circumstances for the announcement of the 2014 James Jessiman Memorial Award (JJMA) recipient would have been different. Those are also the reasons why it took us longer than usual to publish this announce . The LDraw SteerCo had already agreed on Sergio Reano as recipient when news of his sudden passing came in. We therefore decided to contact his wife Cristina and ask for a laudatory speech.

I wish Sergio could be here to celebrate with you! He was really deserving this award. I'm saying this not because he is my husband, but for the fact that he dedicated a good protion of his spare time to LDraw, sometimes even his own sleep. He had two great passions: LEGO, which he collected from childhood (we still have all his old sets and have added, over time, those of our children) and programming. With the SR3D Sergio found a way to combine his interests and created an original, innovative virtual environment, which allowed everyone to build the models of their dreams. As I already wrote he dedicated his very heart and soul to his software: late into the evening, on holidays, and at home… Even when he was not working on it, he thought about how to add new functionality, how to overcome problems, or how to satisfy requests coming from his “fans”. Finding a bug caused much agony!!
Lots have written to me after he his passing telling me their admiration for his work and their esteem for him. Sergio really loved his “creature” and he was working on it until the his very last seconds of his life. He was a generous and capable man and would have given so much in the days to come.

Kind regards,

Cristina

More information on the JJMA can be found at: http://www.ldraw.org/article/222.html

Willy Tschager
On behalf of the LDraw.org Steering Committee

[Roland Melkert]

Congratulations,

Wished it was under better circumstances indeed.

[Steffen]

I also like to congratulate from deep of my heart, Sergio and Cristina.

The award is so well deserved, and Sergio will stay in our memories.

Maybe after some time has passed we could consider to humbly ask Cristina if it would be in Sergios sense
to open-source the sourcecode of Sergios tool, so we can keep his creation alive in the future.

[Orion Pobursky]

We already did. Her current reply is that if Sergio want the code open he would have opened it. Maybe time will change her mind but I respect her decision for now.

[Merlijn Wissink]

Congratulations Sergio. You really deserve it.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Congratulations, Sergio. I wish you could enjoy your reward in this world...

[Tim Gould]

It is truly a tragedy to give a memorial award as a memorial. I wish only that Sergio could have received his award as we first planned.

May Sergio's memory live on in his creations.

Tim

[Johannes Schauer]

Hello all,

We already did. Her current reply is that if Sergio want the code open he would have opened it. Maybe time will change her mind but I respect her decision for now.

when you asked Cristina about relaxing the license terms of SR 3D Builder and releasing the source code, did you make her aware of the consequences that not doing that will have for Sergio's project?

I'm sure Sergio had his reasons to keep the source code closed while he was alive which might've ranged from being interested in the monetary reward to just keeping control over the software itself without having to deal with people ripping off his work.

But something that only Cristina can know is if those reasons are still valid ones after Sergio left this world. Since I see several reports that one cannot buy a license for SR 3D Builder anymore, it seems that there are no monetary reasons involved or otherwise Cristina could at least keep getting donations for Sergio's great work.

Did you make her aware that if code is left unmaintainable then people will stop using the software either because there is no way to (legally) fix bugs, to add features, to add newly introduced LEGO parts or because the world moves on and the software will not run anymore on current operating systems?

I do not know how to contact Cristina, so I would like to make sure that you made it clear that with the software being proprietary and unmaintained, it will slowly be forgotten by everybody. Instead, Cristina could make it so that others can continue the great legacy that her husband left behind, building on his great shoulders. Instead, now people have to redo his work if they would like to use a LEGO builder software with the features that SR 3D Builder offered.

Is she aware that releasing the source code of SR 3D Builder does not remove her husband from the picture? Instead, even with a very liberal open source license like BSD or MIT, his name would have to be mentioned in all derivative works that are made from SR 3D Builder. And copyright law makes it such that this condition has to be kept for 70 years after a person's death.

Only Cristina can know whether the reasons her husband kept the code proprietary are still valid now. And only Cristina can now decide whether her husband's work is supposed to be kept as unchangable memorial or whether future generations shall be allowed to build on top of his work, carrying his name on for however long there is somebody who takes care of the code and making her husband an even greater hero after he passed away than he already was while he was still alive.

Do you have a way to contact her at a later point? If you use Sergio's Email adress, then that might become disfunct in the near future.

Are there any plans from you to bring this topic to her again after some time passed?

I am sorry that this topic is overshadowing a person's passing. I do not want to limit Sergio to the work he did on SR 3D Builder. A person's life is uncomparibly more important than any piece of software. Software can be recreated if needed. Because copyright law is tricky to understand and only few have a basic grasp of it, I just wanted to make sure that Cristina was given enough information about this topic to make an informed decision about it with the best interest for her husband in mind.

[Willy Tschager]

Hello all,

We already did. Her current reply is that if Sergio want the code open he would have opened it. Maybe time will change her mind but I respect her decision for now.

when you asked Cristina about relaxing the license terms of SR 3D Builder and releasing the source code, did you make her aware of the consequences that not doing that will have for Sergio's project?

Yes.

I'm sure Sergio had his reasons to keep the source code closed while he was alive which might've ranged from being interested in the monetary reward to just keeping control over the software itself without having to deal with people ripping off his work.

But something that only Cristina can know is if those reasons are still valid ones after Sergio left this world. Since I see several reports that one cannot buy a license for SR 3D Builder anymore, it seems that there are no monetary reasons involved or otherwise Cristina could at least keep getting donations for Sergio's great work.

Did you make her aware that if code is left unmaintainable then people will stop using the software either because there is no way to (legally) fix bugs, to add features, to add newly introduced LEGO parts or because the world moves on and the software will not run anymore on current operating systems?

Yes. That's why I also removed SR3D form the AIOI.

I do not know how to contact Cristina, so I would like to make sure that you made it clear that with the software being proprietary and unmaintained, it will slowly be forgotten by everybody. Instead, Cristina could make it so that others can continue the great legacy that her husband left behind, building on his great shoulders. Instead, now people have to redo his work if they would like to use a LEGO builder software with the features that SR 3D Builder offered.

Is she aware that releasing the source code of SR 3D Builder does not remove her husband from the picture? Instead, even with a very liberal open source license like BSD or MIT, his name would have to be mentioned in all derivative works that are made from SR 3D Builder. And copyright law makes it such that this condition has to be kept for 70 years after a person's death.

Dunno.

Only Cristina can know whether the reasons her husband kept the code proprietary are still valid now. And only Cristina can now decide whether her husband's work is supposed to be kept as unchangable memorial or whether future generations shall be allowed to build on top of his work, carrying his name on for however long there is somebody who takes care of the code and making her husband an even greater hero after he passed away than he already was while he was still alive.

She has discussed the issue with her children. Hopes are that she or he children might continue Sergio's legacy one day.

Do you have a way to contact her at a later point?

Yes.

Are there any plans from you to bring this topic to her again after some time passed?

No. I tend to respect peoples decisions.

I am sorry that this topic is overshadowing a person's passing. I do not want to limit Sergio to the work he did on SR 3D Builder. A person's life is uncomparibly more important than any piece of software. Software can be recreated if needed. Because copyright law is tricky to understand and only few have a basic grasp of it, I just wanted to make sure that Cristina was given enough information about this topic to make an informed decision about it with the best interest for her husband in mind.

Wanna step in? Drop me a line and I forward you her address - dunno if her English is fit enough though.

w.

[Johannes Schauer]

Hi Willy,

Wanna step in? Drop me a line and I forward you her address - dunno if her English is fit enough though.

yes, given the great quality of SR 3D Builder I'd like to give it a try to not let it get lost in time. I don't see a way to write a PM to people in this forum and email addresses are hidden. If this helps my credibility, I'm the Debian Developer maintaining the ldraw-parts package in Debian, so you can reach me under my Debian address [email protected]

I would also definitely appreciate if others could also drop me an email if they'd like to help proof reading my message to make sure it is well formed and appropriate, given the sensitive subject.

If there is any Italian speaking person who wants to help that'd be even better, but in the worst case, I have an Italian friend who can do any translating for me.

Thank you!