Goodbye to a good friend

John from 1989It’s with great sadness that this month we said goodbye to one of our own. John Bowden (aka Led43) lost his battle with cancer on Saturday 8th March.

John was one of life’s good guys. An enthusiastic supporter and contributor, when his health allowed. Mainly as part of the QA team, almost since the beginning, but often also helping people out in the main #mageia IRC channel on irc.freenode.net

He was really an inspiration to us all. With multiple health problems and a recent bereavement himself, he still enjoyed doing whatever he was able to help the community. When he was first diagnosed with cancer he asked that, should the worst happen, his hardware be of benefit to Mageia, which just shows the kind of person he was. Our thanks to him for that. He was always positive and confident he would beat the cancer, originally wanting to be free of it by Christmas, and was hoping to be able to get everything set up to help with testing the Mageia 4 release. Sadly it was not meant to be and we have lost a good friend. He will be missed.

Our thoughts are with his family at this difficult time. The photo is an old one from 1989 chosen by his sister Judy and one he would have liked.

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11 Responses to Goodbye to a good friend

  1. Nik says:

    John, thank you for always helping the community, you will always be remembered!

  2. Jim says:

    When I was growing up, my best friend was named John Bowden. He would be 58 now and the last I knew of him, he lived in Delaware OH, USA. Please tell me this is not the same John Bowden.

    • Dave Hodgins says:

      According to one of our irc logs, this Jown Bowden posted that he resided in the mudlands uk.

  3. I propose to create a Post Mortem category on the site where to find dedicated pages to each one of the passed members.

    What do you think of this?

    • MrsB says:

      This is a really good idea, thanks for suggesting it. I’ll forward the idea to the council.

  4. wobo says:

    For us who are left behind it always comes as a battle we lost. But I remember my mom how she smiled when we said goodbye to her. Maybe John smiled.

  5. MauricioP says:

    Gracias “Led43” por su apoyo y colaboración no solo para con Mageia, también para todo el movimiento de “Software Libre”. Personas como él, tendrían que gozar de muy buena salud.

  6. isadora says:

    Shivers down the spine.

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  8. Scarper says:

    Salute!!

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