Nan:2012-07-12-board

From: board@big-8.org (Big 8 Management Board)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.admin.announce,news.groups.proposals,news.groups
Subject: Death of Alexander Bartolich
Followup-To: news.groups
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:36:31 EDT
Organization: Big 8 Management Board
Message-ID: <1kn49aa.cop8qs1grlv2kN%board@big-8.org>

[The following is an official communication from the Big-8 Management
Board.  Please note that followups point at news.groups]

The Big 8 Management Board is sad to report we have learned that B8MB
Chairman Alexander Bartolich died suddenly of a cardiac event at his
home in Austria last weekend.

Alexander donated a great deal of time and resources to Usenet and his
loss will affect many users and systems.  He operated Albasani.net,
providing free Usenet access to people around the world.  (Albasani.net
was number 59 last month in the Usenet Top1000.)  The Albasani.net news
server peers with a number of other servers in the Top1000.  Alex also
provided free hosting to many moderated newsgroups with his Huhu
moderation software and server.  In addition, Albasani operates one of
the moderation relays.

The Albasani.net servers are still operating, but it is unknown at this
time for how much longer.  We don't yet know if there will be someone
with the technical expertise and physical and administrative access
available to continue the services.  

We offer our heartfelt condolences to Alexander's family and we will
certainly miss him.

-- 
Kathy Morgan, Vice-chair
Big 8 Management Board