In memoriam: Roland Frank (r-frank) 1970-2017

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NormandC
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In memoriam: Roland Frank (r-frank) 1970-2017

Post by NormandC »

We learned from freecad-heini-1 in the past week on the German sub-forum that Roland Frank, who was known on the forum as r-frank, passed away two months ago, on 23 September 2017.

Since Roland was also active in the English community, and since many of us don't read or understand German (I myself was advised by private message - thanks Jim! Or I would never have known), I decided to create this topic to reach more people. To Wilfried (freecad-heini-1) who found out the sad news, and to Jim (jmaustpc) who placed this topic in the General Announcements: thanks!

I am saddened, and absolutely shocked by Roland's passing. I don't know if it would be appropriate for one of our German members to convey our condolences to his family, and to tell them how well he was appreciated by the whole FreeCAD community. Maybe simply by providing the links to this and to Wilfried's original German topic (link at the bottom).

Roland was only 47 year old. He was a member of the forum since 2013, and also a forum moderator who knew German, English and French. In addition to providing help on the forums, he also produced learning videos in German and English on Youtube through his channels BPLRFE and Learn FreeCAD. These two channels combined have more than 14,500 subscribers. I quickly calculated the total of views for his English videos: more than 500,000 views. :shock:

It is no surprise that Roland's video tutorials are so popular. His videos are of high quality, very detailed, and with narration, something that is often missing and missed on video tutorials.

Roland also took upon himself to salvage the Assembly2 add-on Github repository, since its creator was no longer interested in supporting it.

Roland will be sorely missed.

Normand

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Last edited by NormandC on Sun Dec 03, 2017 12:31 am, edited 8 times in total.
chrisb
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Re: In memoriam: Roland Frank (r-frank) 1970-2017

Post by chrisb »

Thank you for these words which shed light on the big footprint Roland has left in the FreeCAD world.

In the german forum the idea was born to name the next release "Roland". Until now there are many votes for this name and none against. freecad-heini-1 (AKA Wilfried) will convey this to the family.
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Re: In memoriam: Roland Frank (r-frank) 1970-2017

Post by NormandC »

chrisb wrote: Sat Dec 02, 2017 11:42 pm In the german forum the idea was born to name the next release "Roland".
+1
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NormandC
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Re: In memoriam: Roland Frank (r-frank) 1970-2017

Post by NormandC »

Just the latest example of Roland's generosity and dedication effect on people.

https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 72#p202375
plasmac0r wrote: Sat Dec 02, 2017 10:42 am Hey Roland!

I'm totaly new to FreeCAD and 3D-Printing and I haven't even got the printer yet.
To get into FreeCAD I searched the net and found your tutorial video. I just watched your video and I learnt so much.

I registered here just to say: many many thanks for your work!
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Re: In memoriam: Roland Frank (r-frank) 1970-2017

Post by jmaustpc »

Roland's death has shaken some of us a lot, he was a nice bloke and so young, 47! What a waste!

Norm has created the really great post above, I have been trying to think what exactly to write over the last couple of days. I made Norm's post a "global announcement" so that it appears as an announcement above all the forums.

Roland Frank was a moderator here. At the time of his death he was the 17th most prolific poster to the FreeCAD forums, having accumulated that total over approximately 4 years. His last post was the day before he died.

We here within the FreeCAD community are a professionally, culturally, geographically and linguistically diverse group of people from all over the world. I hope that Roland's friends and family may gain some small comfort from knowing that through his involvement with FreeCAD, Roland had a positive impacted the lives of so many diverse people.

It will perhaps appear to many of you that I represent a good example of this diversity, as I am a farmer in the Australian countryside. To a lot of you the Australian outback might be considered as at least geographically (as well as quite possibly, biologically, culturally and linguistically) remote, from your home. A farmer in a CAD community would I expect be considered by a lot of you reading this as an example of professionally diversity. I thought Roland was an intelligent and pleasant person. Us Australians would describe him as a "good bloke".

At times like this I am moved to say that I hope there are some positive truths to the world's various religions. However it is beyond doubt that at least we can have a positive impact on people around us and that positive impact can live long after we are gone.

I sincerely wish to convey my condolences to Roland's friends and family.

Jim

Edit: - I have been asked what I was referring to with my religious/philosophical comments, so I thought I would add this clarification. I just meant that death seems such a waste. Some sort of after life or reincarnation or whatever someone's religious type, branch or flavour's beliefs may be, could make it seem like less of a waste. Yet even without any religious or mystical beliefs, anyone can see that Roland is still helping people/FreeCAD via his previous input, even though he is no longer around.
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Re: In memoriam: Roland Frank (r-frank) 1970-2017

Post by Linden »

I never met Roland and I am ashamed I never thanked him in person for all the effort he but in to freecad both in the fourums and in the videos he created. It is from these videos that I a grown up hippy kid from the queen charlotte islands with no previose back ground in CAD was able to learn both the practice and principle 3d modling well enough that people were asking for my services on a professional level. Thank you Roland your kindness and generosity have touched us all.

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Re: In memoriam: Roland Frank (r-frank) 1970-2017

Post by thschrader »

Markus 12,26:
26 And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?
27 He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”
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Re: In memoriam: Roland Frank (r-frank) 1970-2017

Post by abdullah »

chrisb wrote: Sat Dec 02, 2017 11:42 pm Thank you for these words which shed light on the big footprint Roland has left in the FreeCAD world.

In the german forum the idea was born to name the next release "Roland". Until now there are many votes for this name and none against. freecad-heini-1 (AKA Wilfried) will convey this to the family.
I would love to have the next release named after him.

Aside from his huge contribution to FC, He had a very positive and constructive attitude. I hope there were more like him. He will be missed. :cry:
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Re: In memoriam: Roland Frank (r-frank) 1970-2017

Post by Leatherman »

NormandC wrote: Sat Dec 02, 2017 10:08 pm
Roland was only 47 year old. He was a member of the forum since 2013, and also a forum moderator who knew German, English and French. In addition to providing help on the forums, he also produced learning videos in German and English on Youtube through his channels BPLRFE and Learn FreeCAD. These two channels combined have more than 14,500 subscribers. I quickly calculated the total of views for his English videos: more than 500,000 views. :shock:

Could and should we not place his videos directly somewhere in the forum-index? At least we ensure that this was not a waste of time for him and who knows tomorrow - Youtube might change some rules, like admin has not logged in for a long time and then they will remove the videos or something like that. Apart form that, the outstanding quality of his videos would do very well with the forum. Certainly we should ask his family for permission first.
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Re: In memoriam: Roland Frank (r-frank) 1970-2017

Post by jmaustpc »

Leatherman wrote: Wed Dec 06, 2017 2:36 pm
NormandC wrote: Sat Dec 02, 2017 10:08 pm
Roland was only 47 year old. He was a member of the forum since 2013, and also a forum moderator who knew German, English and French. In addition to providing help on the forums, he also produced learning videos in German and English on Youtube through his channels BPLRFE and Learn FreeCAD. These two channels combined have more than 14,500 subscribers. I quickly calculated the total of views for his English videos: more than 500,000 views. :shock:

Could and should we not place his videos directly somewhere in the forum-index? At least we ensure that this was not a waste of time for him and who knows tomorrow - Youtube might change some rules, like admin has not logged in for a long time and then they will remove the videos or something like that. Apart form that, the outstanding quality of his videos would do very well with the forum.
I must admit I had a similar thought.
Leatherman wrote: Wed Dec 06, 2017 2:36 pm Certainly we should ask his family for permission first.
Actually that depends on the licence he published them under and any policies YouTube may have if the licence is not explicitly stated. Generally OpenSource code and documentation etc. is licensed such that we or anyone can take a copy so long as you acknowledge the author etc.

To varying extents they will become obsolete over time as FreeCAD is developed. For example any PartDesign workbench tutorials for 0.16 or earlier, produced by anyone, will be obsolete once 0.17 is released.

Google has policies about what happens if an account holder dies. They also have a "Inactive Account Manager " which allows a user to determine what Google should do if the user is no longer around, one option is delete the account and all its data. They are talking about Gmail and their other services I believe. Google say they do try to protect a users private data like emails.

You can read about it here
https://support.google.com/accounts/tro ... hl=en&rd=2
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