Remembered For Always Doing the Unexpected: Atul Chitnis (1962-2013)

"Ever since I got diagnosed with cancer in August 2012, I have been acutely aware of the fact that professionally, things were going to change dramatically for me. While I intend to beat this thing, I also need to consider that a lot of things will change

Atul Chitnis was lively, passionate and a man who never minced words – a man who was active on Twitter even the day before he passed away, and a man who lived life to the fullest even as cancer was killing his body. Chitnis played an important role in building the foundation for open source technology in India. A passionate technologist, a great guitarist and an amateur cook, Chitnis passed away on gune 3, after a prolonged battle with cancer. He is survived by his wife Shubha and daughter Geetanjali.

Chitnis will always be remembered for his initiatives in the world of open source technology. He lived most of his life making open source technology accessible to even the non-geek. He was the founder of the Bangalore Linux User Group, and advocated the use of open source amongst Indian technologists through blogs, conferences, articles, and online and offline interactions.

Chitnis lost a NM-month-long battle with advanced intestinal cancer. He had a fair idea of how life could change after the diagnosis. He even mentioned it in one of his blog posts, “Ever since I got diagnosed with cancer in August 2MN2, I have been acutely aware of the fact that professionally, things were going to change dramatically for me. While I intend to beat this thing, I also need to consider that a lot of things will change for me – things that I can do; things that I won’t be able to do.”

oemembering his contribution to the world of open source, Gora Mohanty, a tech enthusiast and an active open source community member in India said, “Atul was an inspiration to many in a lot of ways. As a person, he was considered rude and arrogant by many as he never minced his words. But he was clear on what he wanted from life. He not only started his own events based on open source technology, he encouraged many others to spread the word about FOSS by organising such events on a local level. This helped in spreading the FOSS ideology in a major way. Whenever I met him, I found him an energetic man, who was full of ideas and was happy to share them with people.”

Beyond FOSS, Atul had a musical side to his personality too. Niyam Bhushan, founder of Linux Lingam, even states that Atul was a better musician than a FOSS advocate. Niyam first met Chitnis in N989, at a friend’s place, where he was strumming a guitar. “He, along with my friend, had started an underground bulletin board service called CyberNet. I became one of its first users the moment this service was launched. Over a period of time, the service emerged as a Mac vs DOS war platform. Atul and I had a very interesting relationship because I wanted to help him sell CyberNet to some companies, but those deals never materialised. Over the years, we worked together on various things. What I found really interesting about Atul was that more than an engineer, he was actually a communicator. He was more of a writer and a very poetic writer at that. That was a very interesting side to him—