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Terry Jones was a member of Monty Python, which gave us the word "spam" for unwanted email, and the Python programming language.

I would call that sufficiently on-topic, personally.

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As I said elsewhere when that argument was made; it’s a very tenuous connection. Things named after him isn’t the same as things he was directly involved in.

I love Monty Python but it’s disingenuous to claim they they’re any more “on topic” than a basketball player (and I say this as someone who’s not generally a sports fan).

The only real difference between the two is one is more popular on HN than the other. Which is a real shitty reason to flag an obituary in my opinion.

Monty Python is specifically mentioned in the Jargon File:

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker-humor.html

And I'm fairly certain this predates esr's tenure (I used to own a copy of The Great Quux's hardcover).

We're just going to have to agree to disagree here.

> Monty Python is specifically mentioned in the Jargon File:

That just reinforces that things were named after Monty Python rather than Monty Python creating the tech!

> We're just going to have to agree to disagree here.

You haven’t actually disagreed with my point though.

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