Dean Allen, R.I.P.
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He created Textile, a Markdown-like "lightweight markup" language that actually predates Markdown (and is, by some measures, more powerful). He went on to create Textpattern, a blogging system that, like WordPress, bloomed into a lightweight CMS -- but unlike WordPress, TXP (as its fans call it) has a much better template and extension system. And, Allen created TextDrive, an early shared hosting service that, at least until its unfortunate-in-retrospect merger with Joyent, was a power user dream. (No offense to the folks at Joyent -- well, not much -- but TextDrive became their transparently unloved "low end" brand surprisingly quickly.)
Dean was much loved by his fans and seen as intractable and 'difficult' by others.
Still - one deserves to rest in peace and not be spoken ill of. Good bye, Dean, and thanks for what you did, and what the space you helped build, has done for several internet communities (textile, textpattern, early Rails, early javascript-on-the-server...) that will yet live on.
where most people are trying to "monetize" the web, his focus was on making it more "humane". it's still not too late to see that he was right.
The upcoming Textpattern 4.7.0 will be released in memory of Dean Allen.
Cheers, Dean.
https://github.com/textpattern/textpattern/commit/7d41b1ada4...