A Tribute to Raj Mathur: A Much Respected FOSS Contributor

People active on Linux User Groups in India do not need an introduction to Raj Mathur. Yes, Raj Mathur, the guy known for his brutal honesty and principles, is no more. We lost him on 12.12.12.

Raj Mathur was a founder member of the Indian Linux Users Group, Delhi, and a very active member of the free and open source community. Well respected and extremely knowledgeable, he was often sought after for advice, which he readily offered. He was one of the earliest users and advocates of Linux and free software in India. Apart from contributions to the FOSS corpus with numerous packages released under the GNU GPL, he was also a regular member of the Free Software Award Committee, Director Emeritus of the Open Source Initiative and visiting professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi.

Mathur was an inspiration to many. He always extended a helping hand to those who wanted to experience the world of FOSS and even guided those who wanted to make money out of it. He ran Kandalaya, a consulting firm in the GNU/Linux, network application integration and network security domains. Mathur was a wonderful orator as well when it came to talking about the importance of open source technology. We had the opportunity of inviting this visionary techie to the recently organised Open Source India 2012, held in Bengaluru.

Kishore Bhargava, Mathur’s close buddy for the past 30 years, broke down when we contacted him. He recalled, “We spoke over the phone almost every day. Unfortunately, we did not speak yesterday. Raj and I have shared the greatest moments together. He loved to have fun and encouraged everyone around him to do the same. He loved his food, his movies, his music, and being with friends and family.”

Bhargava informed us that Raj suffered a heart attack yesterday and was declared ‘brought dead’ by the doctors when taken to the hospital. Supreet Sethi, one of the members of ILUG-D, wrote in his tribute to Raj on the LUG, “Yesterday’s news, of Raj moving on, is shocking. I met him through ILUG-D and came to know him better through various activities of ILUG-D that he helped organise. He was brutally honest and that made him special. He was special because with those piercing words, he could get through to you better. Yesterday night, I visited his drawing room, which played host to many ILUG-D events. Niyam playfully called it the opium den. The opium den was filled with people like Andrew, Gora and Friji. The person with the trademark green camouflage was lying lifeless on the low diwan. For a second, I imagined a cup of coffee and creme, which was a kind of ritual commencement of linux-delhi meetings, with Kishore bringing the coffee and Raj arranging for cups and creme. The cup of coffee is not there any more, that table is missing and, more importantly, Raj has checked out of the opium den.”

Here’s what Raj Mathur told us when we spoke to him about tips for open source businesses:

You should be aware of what technologies are available in different fields even if you are not very conversant with them. Those whose jobs are basically to architect and implement solutions for their clients, should be aware of the latest and emerging technologies. For instance, when you are architecting a solution in the proprietary software domain for a mail server, you would use one base technology and all the other technologies come along with it. But when you are dealing with open source technology, you have to choose each component individually and make all the components work together. You should be aware of what components are available, as well as their strengths, weaknesses and special features. You should also know which technologies will fit together for a solution that’s appropriate for your client, and you have to know how to join all of them together. These are the things that you need to be aware of when you are dealing with open source. It is very easy to get stuck with one technology in open source also, which is fine, as one can become an expert in that technology. But eventually, what happens is that clients end up losing out on new technologies, or rather, better technologies—which may be more suitable for their requirements—because the service provider is not aware of them. And the awareness comes from interactions with the community— whether it is through RSS feeds, forums or mailing lists. The most important thing while consulting in open source is that you should be more open to new technologies than you would be in the proprietary software world, because technology doesn’t change so fast in the case of the latter. In the open source world, the technologies get enhanced and mutate really fast.