Jeff Moore makes a very nice post here about Richard's passing. He is survived by his wife and daughter, among others. Please consider donating to their assistance fund.

I was first acquainted with Cyberlot by email and blog posts, and met him in person more than once at various conferences. He was always kind and congenial, and never showed any arrogance or bad attitude. He was a considerate and thorough contributor to the Solar project, and I have him to thank for the "percent-of-PHP" measurement statistic on the framework benchmarking project. I always give him credit for that in my talks, and so his name will continue live there.

And now, a practical note: A lot of PHP folk out there are freelancers or independent consultants, or are in other kinds of unstable job situations. If you are one of these, and you have a family, *please* consider purchasing term life insurance to take care of your loved ones if you pass suddenly. Get it even if you are very young. It is not expensive. It's not the only thing you should do to prepare, but it's an important thing.

Are you stuck with a legacy PHP application? You should buy my book because it gives you a step-by-step guide to improving you codebase, all while keeping it running the whole time.