Gene Kan died a week and a half ago, apparently as the result of a suicide.
He and I worked together at Check Point a few years back, and knew each other at Berkeley before that.
He had a quiet, deadpan sense of humor that fit perfectly in the ennui-filled ignored-by-management getting-nothing-done environment that enveloped us at that job. He went on to work on Gnutella and ended up representing the peer-to-peer networking movement in the media and to Congress.
After we both had left Check Point, I ran into him twice. Once was in the fall of 1999, while I was taking a whirlwind tour of Europe. I was just poking around Trafalgar Square when I spotted him on the street. He had been in Paris visiting someone he was dating and had taken a day trip on the Chunnel to London. Very random and pretty funny.
The other time was just last month, at the Belmont Caltrain station. I had just gotten off the southbound train to go to work, and he was waiting for the northbound train to go to San Francisco. We chatted a bit; he talked about being totally bored at his new gig at Sun.
Here's to you, Gene. I'm sorry you left us early, and I'm glad to have known you.
Posted by dpassage at July 08, 2002 06:35 PMI'm terribly sorry to hear about his death. I was not awore of that terrible tragedy !
I have much admiration for his work on gnutella.
Denis Gueyffier
eNetshare