Monday, September 16, 2019

Henk Penning

It is with great sadness that we must report that Henk "HPP" Penning passed away this summer.  For the last decade he was the sole maintainer of the CPAN mirrors list, patiently working with hundreds of mirror operators around the world. He also managed the system that monitored the status of those mirrors, ensuring that out of date mirrors were quickly detected and removed.  His “instant mirroring” client was used by many mirrors to ensure that their copy of CPAN was up to date within minutes of a new package being added.

Even through the end, he carefully, gracefully, and with lots of patience made sure others had access to the systems he was running. He quietly worked in the background, but every Perl developer benefited from his work, knowingly or not.

He was also member of the Apache Software Foundation (and also managed their mirror network).  They posted a very nice memorial page that's worth reading.

We remember Henk for his ever present kindness and helpfulness.  The Perl and broader open source communities are will miss him.

- Ask & Robert